The building blocks for life, including salts, organic matter and amino acids have been found in samples returned to Earth from outer space.
Samples contain all five nucleobases of DNA and RNA, supporting theory that asteroids may have seeded Earth with life's essential ingredients.
The building blocks for organic matter have been discovered on the asteroid Bennu, as deatiled in a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy. The research gives new insight into how life originated on Earth and where we might find it elsewhere in the universe.
Scientists detected all five nucleobases -- building blocks of DNA and RNA -- in samples returned from asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission.
Analyzing a sample from an asteroid named Bennu reveals the chemicals necessary to form DNA and RNA.
Rock and dust samples brought back from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu contain organic matter, including amino acids and all five DNA and RNA bases, as well as salts that formed early in the history of Bennu's parent body.
Joint Press Release by Hokkaido University, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Kyushu University, Tohoku University, and
Japanese collaborators detected all five nucleobases — building blocks of DNA and RNA — in samples returned ... 121.6 grams of sample from asteroid (101955) Bennu in September 2023—the ...
Scientists have discovered numerous organic compounds in samples from the asteroid Bennu, including key amino acids and the building blocks of DNA and RNA. This discovery suggests that the components necessary for life may have been commonly present in the early Solar System,
Asteroid Bennu seems to have come from a long-lost world on the fringes of the solar system, where saltwater pooled and dried over thousands of years and life’s basic ingredients were widespread.
Studies of asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life.