The ruins of the asteroid, which is dried by the spacecraft, contains new evidence about the origin of life

Scientists have finally given a closer look at the rubble collected by a NASA spacecraft. In it, they found new evidence about the components of the life that was present in the early solar system and how they might have reached Earth.

An international team of scientists issued some of their discoveries about samples It was collected by the NASA Osiris-Rix spacecraft from the nearby carbon asteroid in 2020 and He returned to Earth in 2023.

Bennu, a carbon -rich asteroid, was approximately 300,000 km on Earth, part of the ancestral asteroid formed in the early solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. For this reason, scientists can tell about the molecules needed for life in the early solar system.

“This asteroid is similar to a frozen time capsule,” said Kim Tate, chief mineral Secretary at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and co -author of a new study on his metal composition.

What scientists found on the asteroid

By examining the minerals from the dry and dusty asteroid now, researchers can know that it contains salty water once and that there is sodium, chloride, fluorides, carbonate and phosphate in salt. nature. The crystals seem to form the way they do in salt lakes on the floor.

A separate analysis of the important molecules in life is found amino acids, including 14 of 20 used to build proteins in living organisms. All five nucleus or building blocks of RNA and DNA were found. Nature astronomy.

“We now know that Beno is that the raw components of life are in interesting and really complicated ways on the body of Peno,” said Tim McCoy, Secretary of the meteorites at the Museum of Natural History in Smithsonian. In a press release.

Tate said that these carbon molecules are formed in “very salty water, which we never expected.”

The research adds to evidence from Meteorites and The task of taking samples from the other asteroidand Japanese Space Agency, Hayabosa 2Space rocks can carry the water needed for life and build biological blocks such as amino acids and nucleus.

What can this mean for the origin of life

The researchers wrote In the study of nature The conditions that must be on the old survival that Bennu came from a “exciting environment, but not tested” to form necessary particles for life. They suggest experiments to see if the building blocks of DNA and RNA can be formed in similar chemical conditions in the laboratory.

“We now know that we have the basic basic building blocks to move along this path towards life, but we do not know what extent this environment can allow along this path to progress,” McCoy said.

Tita added that one of NASA’s priorities is to search for water in space because it is necessary for life.

“I find this that makes me very excited, and I hope that others will get the possibilities of another life there.”

Tait was part of a working group of scientists who met every two weeks to discuss and explain the new results of different parts of the asteroid sample distributed on laboratories all over the world.

Canada was part of the team for the task of returning the asteroid because it was It contributed to a tool used to draw the asteroid map in order to collect the sample.

While there are signs that places such as Mars may have once had a warmer water and climate, Gordon Osinsky, a professor at Western University in London, Oant. Conditions for life. “

It was a precedent chemical sign for water – minerals called watercloth – minerals – It was found during the Bennu examination by Osiris-Rex spacecraft.

But there is currently no water on Bennu, and the new study indicates that it has evaporated at some point in the past.

Another questions related to the origin of life that scientists wanted to explore with this task is the reason that the amino acids, which can come in chemical forms called “left” and “right hand”, are found only on the left- the shape was delivered in living organisms.

The researchers informed the new Nature astronomy I study that the amino acids collected from Bennu in both left shapes and right hand in almost equal quantities.

Osinski said that scientists are not completely sure of what this might mean. The molecules when they were destroyed on the ground in the past.

Osinski, who is looking for how to play the effects of the meteorite at the origin of life, said that scientists have long assumed that asteroids may have threw the blocks of life to the earth.

In fact, Evidence of water, protein blocks Building blocks of DNA and RNA DNA It was previously found on meteorites, including those that fell in CanadaThe problem is that meteorites may be contaminated with water and life on the ground.

The exciting thing about Bennu samples is that they were collected in space. “They are completely primitive,” said Osinski. “So we know anything in these samples that came and formed either this asteroid or there in the solar system.”