Sugars Essential to Life Discovered in Asteroid Bennu, Says NASA Scientist
WASHINGTON – Samples returned from the asteroid Bennu have yielded a groundbreaking discovery: the presence of ribose and glucose, sugars crucial to life as we know it. This marks the frist time these sugars have been definitively identified in an asteroid sample, according to a NASA scientist involved in the analysis.
“This is a pivotal moment in our understanding of the origins of life,” stated Dr. Yvette Pendleton, lead astrobiologist on the Bennu sample analysis team, in a press briefing today. “Finding ribose, a key component of RNA, alongside glucose, a primary energy source for living organisms, strongly supports the theory that the building blocks of life could have been delivered to Earth from space.”
The bennu samples also contain all five nucleobases – adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil – which are essential to the genetic code of both DNA and RNA. Furthermore, analysis revealed at least 14 of the 20 amino acids used in Earth biology were present within the asteroid material.
Beyond these core components, the samples indicate Bennu formed in the outer Solar System, evidenced by ammonia levels 75 times higher than those found in the Ryugu asteroid. Scientists believe Bennu’s composition has remained largely unchanged for 4.5 billion years, effectively making it a “time capsule” preserving the chemical conditions of the early Solar System.
Previous studies had indicated the presence of liquid water within Bennu, reacting with minerals to create organic compounds. These new findings confirm that this process was prolific enough to perhaps contribute to the formation of life’s foundations.
“The richness of organic material in Bennu is remarkable,” Dr. Pendleton explained. “It demonstrates that the necessary ingredients for life were not unique to Earth, but could have been widely distributed throughout the early solar system.”
