3 min read
1 comments
The sample from the asteroid Bennu, returned by the OSIRIS-REx mission in September 2023, revealed elements essential for life, such as amino acids, nucleobases and evaporite minerals. This reinforces the idea that the ingredients for life were scattered throughout the early Solar System. Are we closer to understanding how it all began? Studying Bennu could revolutionize our understanding of the origins of life on Earth and even raise new questions about the possibility of life on other planets.
A sample from the asteroid Bennu has just turned our understanding of life in the solar system upside down. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned a sample of the space rock to Earth in September 2023, and early studies have already revealed some impressive findings. Scientists have discovered amino acids, nucleobases, and minerals called evaporites—the building blocks of life.
This doesn't mean they found life on Bennu, but it suggests that the building blocks for it to emerge were more widespread in space than we thought. Could life have started somewhere else? and traveled to Earth?
What is the asteroid Bennu and its origin?
Bennu may be small, but its history is gigantic: it dates back 4,5 billion years! It was part of a mega-asteroid about 100 km wide that formed in the outer reaches of the Solar System, beyond the orbit of Jupiter. At some point, this colossal body broke apart, and one of the pieces drifted through space until it became the Bennu we know today.
- Petrified Wood — How Trees Turned to Stone Over Millions of Years
- American startup carries out the first industrial operation of an electric reactor and produces tons of steel with technology that promises to reduce emissions in the steel industry
- NASA captures Curiosity rover exploring the surface of a huge crater
- Researchers at the University of East London have built a school using sugarcane bagasse blocks as raw material
The OSIRIS-REx mission launched in 2016 to collect an intact sample of this asteroid and help us better understand the early history of our solar system. On September 24, 2023, a 4,3-ounce (about 121-gram) sample was successfully returned to Earth—and that’s when the discoveries started to pour in.
Bennu sample: what did scientists find?
Early studies have shown that Bennu It's a real time capsule, holding fundamental secrets for life. Among the elements found are:
Amino acids: compounds that form proteins, essential for any living being.
Nucleobases: components of DNA and RNA, responsible for the storage and transmission of genetic information.
Evaporite minerals: formed when water containing dissolved salts evaporates, suggesting that Bennu once had contact with liquid water.
NASA confirmed that the sample contained 14 of the 20 amino acids found on Earth, all five nucleobases used in terrestrial life and high levels of ammonia, a key ingredient in the formation of amino acids.
What does this mean for the search for life in space?
If these building blocks of life were floating around the solar system billions of years ago, then life may have had plenty of chances to get started in places other than Earth. Bennu may be just one of many asteroids that have scattered these ingredients across the cosmos.
This also raises an intriguing question: could life on Earth itself have had a little help from asteroids? Maybe essential compounds have arrived to the primitive oceans in meteorites, helping in the emergence of the first forms of life.
I believe this theory is correct, it makes total sense! It is worth continuing to search for life, including on moons containing oceans.