How to Use carbonaceous in a Sentence

carbonaceous

adjective
  • The Winchcombe meteorite is a rare type of carbon-rich rock called a carbonaceous chondrite and the first of its kind ever found in the U.K.
    Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Nov. 2022
  • Sure enough, the rock had the oxygen fingerprint of a meteorite, and a rare and old kind, too: a CV3 carbonaceous chondrite.
    Quanta Magazine, 13 June 2014
  • And the carbon inside the fossils contained even less carbon-13 than the random bits of carbonaceous stuff outside the fossils.
    Scott K. Johnson, Ars Technica, 3 Jan. 2018
  • The carbonaceous are fragile and break apart very easily.
    Perry A. Farrell, Detroit Free Press, 17 Jan. 2018
  • Also note the dark black flecks…this material is mostly carbonaceous shale, which is kind of like coal.
    Brian Romans, WIRED, 10 Aug. 2007
  • The one pound of carbonaceous chondrite plowed into the English town of Winchcombe in February 2021.
    Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 17 Nov. 2022
  • Most of the carbonaceous chondrites fell onto the ice during that 2000 incident.
    Elizabeth Howell, Forbes, 10 Mar. 2021
  • Ryugu is a carbonaceous or C-type space rock, which implies it is essentially made out of rock that contains a ton of carbon and water.
    Popular Science, 25 Sep. 2020
  • The type of meteorite that produces the fragments that littered Winchcombe was made of carbonaceous chondrite.
    Mike Wehner, BGR, 9 Mar. 2021
  • The meteorite is classified as a carbonaceous chondrite, which is an rare piece of space debris that’s older than the planets in the solar system.
    Theresa MacHemer, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Mar. 2021
  • The carbonaceous chondrite is divided into six groups based on their bulk chemistry.
    Perry A. Farrell, Detroit Free Press, 17 Jan. 2018
  • The age of the grains in their dust can be identified and dated by their isotopic signatures, and the team compared the Ryugu dust samples to grains found in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites that have been found on Earth.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 26 Sep. 2022
  • Aliphatic aldehydes, which have been found in some types of carbonaceous meteorites that have fallen to Earth, are precursors of carboxylic acids and amino acids.
    Elizabeth Rayne, Ars Technica, 14 Nov. 2023
  • The meteorite—a rare type known as a carbonaceous chondrite—may contain complex organic molecules that gave life on Earth a head start.
    Joel Goldberg, Science | AAAS, 19 Aug. 2020
  • Phaethon is a B-type asteroid that could be similar to some carbonaceous chondrites, which could contain organic molecules — the stuff of life.
    Blaine Friedlander, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2017
  • The carbonaceous chondrite, which contains organics, amino acids and other ingredients for life, is so rare that it has never been found in that region before.
    Elizabeth Howell, Forbes, 10 Mar. 2021
  • Most of these were likely not comets but rather asteroids called carbonaceous chondrites, which can be up to 20 percent water by weight, storing it in a form of hydrogen like ringwoodite.
    Quanta Magazine, 11 July 2018
  • That is strange because the other rocky planets have a lot less carbon on their surfaces, and carbonaceous asteroids from which a carbon-rich planet could form are much further from the sun than Mercury’s present orbit.
    David Rothery, Discover Magazine, 11 Mar. 2016
  • One common theory holds that rocky planets like Earth and Mars got much of their water from a particular type of meteorite known as carbonaceous chondrites.
    Popular Science, 2 Apr. 2020
  • All three are classified as carbonaceous chondrites, made of rocky material thought to have formed early in the solar system’s history.
    NBC News, 28 Apr. 2022
  • Primitive carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, thought to be parts of the original nebula that formed the solar system, come in at ~4.56 billion.
    Erik Klemetti, Discover Magazine, 24 Apr. 2018
  • But the new data suggests that, from the perspective of these isotopes, everything falls into just two classes: carbonaceous and noncarbonaceous.
    John Timmer, Ars Technica, 17 June 2017
  • Now, new research indicates that many carbonaceous asteroids, may be much more rocky than previously thought.
    Bruce Dorminey, Forbes, 22 Oct. 2021
  • As the first spacecraft to visit a carbonaceous asteroid, Hayabusa2 can help determine the provenance of meteorites discovered on Earth and shed some light on the processes that formed the organic compounds in the early solar system.
    Daniel Oberhaus, Wired, 4 Dec. 2020
  • The mammals also miniaturized over generations, as leaves became less nutritious in the carbonaceous air.
    Natalie Wolchover, WIRED, 3 Mar. 2019
  • When word spread throughout the scientific community that the dining room destroyer might be a carbonaceous chondrite, a ticking clock began.
    David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 22 May 2019
  • Another useful marker are tiny spheroidal carbonaceous particles (SCPs), a type of tough fly ash only produced by the high-temperature burning of coal or heavy oil.
    Damian Carrington, WIRED, 14 Jan. 2023
  • For example, carbonaceous chondrites—some of the oldest rocks in the solar system—were recently found to harbor pyruvic acid, which is essential for metabolism.
    David W. Brown, Smithsonian, 2 July 2018
  • Both were carbonaceous chondrites, a rare class of meteorites resembling Ryugu that scientists think accreted from smaller icy bodies after the solar system first formed.
    John Rennie, Quanta Magazine, 4 Jan. 2023
  • Though the vast majority of the asteroid is carbonaceous, researchers found material that’s water-poor and silicate-rich that likely belongs to an S-type asteroid.
    Popular Science, 25 Sep. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'carbonaceous.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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