Is life out there? NASA finds essential sugars on ancient asteroid the size of the Empire State Building
NASA finds sugars ‘essential to life’ on 16,000-foot-wide asteroid
- NASA has discovered sugars vital for life on Earth, including glucose and ribose, in samples from the 4.6 billion-year-old Bennu asteroid.
- This marks the first time ribose, a crucial component of RNA, has been identified in an extraterrestrial sample.
- The presence of these sugars suggests that the chemical ingredients necessary for life are widely distributed throughout the solar system.
- The finding of ribose but not deoxyribose supports the theory that early life forms may have relied on RNA for survival.
- Scientists also uncovered a mysterious 'space gum' in the samples, a translucent substance believed to have formed in the early solar system and potentially contributed to life on Earth.