Ingredients to life on Earth discovered on distant asteroid for first time
Data from a 5 billion-year-old asteroid suggests the ingredients to life on Earth were present in the early days of our solar system.
They’re the building rocks of life.
Analysis of debris from the nearly 5 billion-year-old asteroid Bennu suggests the ingredients to life on Earth were present in the early days of our solar system, as detailed in a series of papers published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
These key-to-life elements have not been detected on extraterrestrial rocks until now.
“We now know from Bennu that the raw ingredients of life were combining in really interesting and complex ways on Bennu’s parent body,” study co-lead author Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, said in a statement.
“We have discovered that next step on a pathway to life.”
The sample was originally harvested from this space rock age of ages in 2020 by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which deposited a capsule of it on Earth in 2023 for scientists to study.
Researchers found that the fragments harboured all five nucleobases — the “letters” that comprise DNA and RNA — as well as 11 unique mineral compounds, which have not been found in any previous study of space rocks.
This analysis revealed how evaporated water formed a briny primordial “broth” where these elemental life precursors interacted to “create more complex structures” per the release.
These residual brine deposits have been compared to the salt crusts found in lakebeds on Earth. The difference is that Bennu’s chemical footprint dates back to the start of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, around 100 million years before Bennu’s parent asteroid formed.
“These grains of rock have shown that the building blocks of life and the conditions for making them existed on Bennu’s parent body 4.5 billion years ago,” reps for NASA’s Goddard space centre wrote on X.
This could indicate how this existence-forming emulsion was ubiquitous across the galaxy, upping the probability that the building blocks of life could have formed on planets and moons located from away the sun, NASA reported.
“NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission already is rewriting the textbook on what we understand about the beginnings of our solar system,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“Asteroids provide a time capsule into our home planet’s history, and Bennu’s samples are pivotal in our understanding of what ingredients in our solar system existed before life started on Earth.”
Bennu might not be the only extraterrestrial entity that contains this so-called elixir of life either. Researchers believe that similar brines might be found on other cosmic bodies such as the dwarf planet Ceres and Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, where sodium carbonate has been discovered.
Meanwhile, UK researchers confirmed the existence of a “super-Earth” 20 light-years away that’s in the habitable zone — meaning it’s at the right distance from its central star to sustain water on its surface.
While Bennu harbours an intriguing mix of raw ingredients, researchers haven’t confirmed whether this rolling stone’s creative juices could’ve formed advanced organic structures a la the evolution of life on Earth.
“We now know we have the basic building blocks to move along this pathway towards life, but we don’t know how far along that pathway this environment could allow things to progress,” said McCoy.
This story originally appeared on New York Post and was reproduced with permission
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