NASA finds life-linked sugars and ‘space gum’ on…
Talk about a sugar rush!
NASA could have just come a little nearer to cracking one of science’s most enduring mysteries — how life on Earth obtained began.
The space company has reportedly found life-giving important sugars on the asteroid Bennu, a 500-meter-wide rock hurtling through space, some 200 million miles from our planet.
NASA cracked open asteroid Bennu and discovered sugars and a wad of “space gum” older than Earth’s first amoeba. Turns out the universe has been chewing on the ingredients for life all along. NASA / SWNS
Scientists discovered ribose — a five-carbon sugar essential for RNA — and glucose, the six-carbon power booster that fuels the human existence.
This is the first time ribose has been confirmed in a pattern collected straight from an asteroid — though it’s been noticed in a few meteorites before.
Don’t panic — no aliens right here. Instead, specialists say these sugars are a key ingredient to the origin of life billions of years in the past.
“All five nucleobases used to construct both DNA and RNA, along with phosphates, have already been found in the Bennu samples brought to Earth by OSIRIS-REx,” said research chief Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Japan.
“The new discovery of ribose means that all of the components to form the molecule RNA are present in Bennu.”
Furukawa said today’s life relies upon on the three-way teamwork of DNA, RNA and proteins — but the earliest life on Earth most likely stored issues less complicated.
Rock sweet? The sugary scientific deal with awaiting researchers on Bennu is a candy discover that might help clarify Earth’s origins. AP
RNA, he said, is one thing of an early Swiss Army knife, in a position to maintain genetic code and jump-start key reactions without any help.
Scientists say Bennu’s samples are hiding a weird bonus: a never-before-seen “space gum” that could have helped kickstart life on Earth.
The goo — once squishy, now stiff — is packed with nitrogen- and oxygen-rich polymers that doubtless shaped as Bennu’s historic guardian rock heated up in the early photo voltaic system.
Researchers suppose this cosmic chewing gum was constructed from carbamate, a compound that managed to hyperlink itself into advanced chains before the asteroid obtained heat and watery enough to wash it away.
NASA’s latest asteroid loot contains life-linked sugars and a gummy thriller materials straight out of the photo voltaic system’s toddler years. Apparently, even the cosmos had a messy part. NASA/Kimberly Allums / SWNS
In other phrases: Bennu’s been carrying around the universe’s oldest stick of gum, and it would just be holding some severe scientific clues.
Scott Sandford of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley who led another related research said that the unusual, gummy materials could also be Bennu’s oldest chemical makeover, a relic from the photo voltaic system’s wild youth.
“We’re looking at, quite possibly, one of the earliest alterations of materials that occurred in this rock,” the astrophysicist said — including that “we’re looking at events near the beginning of the beginning.”
Scientists also discovered that Bennu’s samples comprise six occasions more supernova mud than any other identified space rock — historic stardust that predates our photo voltaic system.
In other phrases, Bennu’s guardian physique shaped in a cosmic neighborhood wealthy in the ashes of dying stars, giving scientists a uncommon peek at the galaxy’s unique recipe combine.
And Bennu’s no stranger to Earth’s neighborhood. Formed practically 4.6 billion years in the past, it swings by every six years, coming nearer than the Moon.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission snagged samples during a 2020 flyby, bringing them home in September 2023 for some severe lab scrutiny.
The findings back the so-called “RNA world” thought: before DNA, RNA doubtless carried the genetic playbook and drove the chemistry needed for life.
And that glucose discovery? It reveals that early photo voltaic system snacks for life have been already on the menu.
Bonus plot twist: while Bennu is now serving to us determine our origins, it’s not precisely innocent.
Scientists say there’s a one-in-2,700 shot it might slam into Earth in the 12 months 2182.
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