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NASA has found sugars essential for life on Earth in samples 4.6 billion year old Bennu asteroid,
The agency said on Tuesday that scientists have discovered glucose, the human body’s main source of energy, as well as ribose, a vital RNA component.
This is the first time that ribose has been found in an extraterrestrial sample.
Although the sugars are not proof of extraterrestrial life, NASA said it shows that elements important to the chemistry of life are widespread throughout the solar system.
Samples from the 1,600-foot-wide asteroid were collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2020. The spacecraft launches in 2016 and returns to Earth in 2023. The samples have since gone through several tests.
Discovered by New Mexico scientists in 1999, Bennu, the size of New York City’s Empire State Building, is now roaming in outer space, some 160 million miles from Earth, according to The Sky Live app,
“All five nucleobases, along with the phosphates used to build both DNA and RNA, have already been found in Bennu samples brought to Earth by OSIRIS-REx,” said Dr. Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Japan. statement,
“The new discovery of ribose means that all the components that make up the molecule RNA are present in Bennu,” he said.
NASA found Samples returned from Mars earlier this year reveal signs of past microbial life,
Rewriting genetic history
NASA said the finding of ribose is not a complete surprise, as it had been detected before. meteorite Recovered on Earth in 2019.
But the absence of the sugar deoxyribose, a key building block of our DNA, was also interesting because of what it might mean for the beginning of life.
This means that ribose may have been more common than deoxyribose in the early Solar System environment and may support the theory that the first forms of life depended on RNA for survival.
“Current life is based on a complex system organized primarily by three types of functional biopolymers: DNA, RNA, and proteins,” Furukawa said. “However, early life may have been simple.”
Mysterious and Ancient Space Glue
That’s not all of the sugars scientists have found in asteroid samples. Researchers found ancient and mysterious “space glue” – something never seen before in space rocks.
NASA says this translucent rubber and plastic-like substance could have helped form life on Earth and that this glue was probably created in the early days of the solar system.
The larger “original” asteroid, which Bennu broke up, Formed from materials present in the cloud of gas and dust that ultimately formed our Solar System.
previous research It turns out that the original asteroid survived various chemical processes involving heat and water during the formation of the Solar System.
As Bennu’s progeny began to heat up due to radiation from this process, a chemical compound called carbamate was produced and later reacted with other molecules to form what scientists called a flexible “gum.”
“With this strange substance, we are possibly seeing one of the earliest transformations of materials that have occurred in this rock,” said Dr. Scott Sandford, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
“On this primitive asteroid that formed in the early days of the solar system, we are seeing events near the beginning.”