What the mission OSIRIS-REx brought back to Earth in his capsule after being perched on the asteroid Bennu It could be very enriching, but the truth is that it has exceeded all our expectations. And in the past we have already been surprised to find water or carbon in space, but now NASA has confirmed than what has been seen on this asteroid: Bennu contains sugars essential for life as we know it.
But not only that, among the grains of dust and rock, researchers have come across something they did not expect: a mysterious substance that they have already dubbed ‘space gum’.
The discovery. After a long time analyzing the materials extracted by this probe, the results have finally been released to a published study in Nature Geoscience led by Yoshihiro Furukawa from Tohoku University (Japan) and which undoubtedly marks a milestone in astrobiology.
From a sample of just 603 milligrams of Bennu dust, the team was able to detect a variety of sugars that are biologically significant, such as glucose. This marks something historic since it is the first time that this sugar that we know so well has been identified in a pristine extraterrestrial sample. But this has not only been the important thing, but also samples of ribose which is an essential component of RNA, which is responsible for transporting genetic information in human organisms and which undoubtedly It became popular during the COVID pandemic.
Its importance. Until now we had seen signs of these samples in meteorites, but there was always the shadow of land pollution upon impact. Now this doubt disappears since the samples arrived sealed.
What is undoubtedly important is that the joint presence of these sugars suggests that they were synthesized by abiotic processes (without life) inside the asteroid, probably through chemical reactions in the presence of water at the dawn of the solar system. Something that would be essential to be able to generate life.
Space gum. If sugars are the “hard” science news, what has captured most of our attention is what Danny Glavin, a mission co-investigator at the Goddard Space Flight Center, describes as “space gum.”
The analyzes revealed a unique polymeric material, a kind of complex, sticky substance that doesn’t fit the standard minerals we’re used to. That is why its composition is now under study and its presence indicates that Bennu is not only a pile of rubble, but a chemical laboratory that is capable of create organic macromolecules that we have living beings inside us.
In addition to this “gum” and sugars, the samples contained star dust that is older than our own Sun, survivors of ancient supernovae that were trapped in the asteroid’s matrix.
A ‘complete kit’. With this announcement, the Bennu puzzle seems to be complete since amino acids have been found that are essential for proteins, bases to form DNA, carboxylic acids and now sugars to give energy and structure to RNA.
This strongly supports the hypothesis that carbon-rich asteroids, like Bennu, acted as “cosmic delivery boys” during the late intense bombardment, seeding the early Earth with all the ingredients necessary for the life we are now enjoying to emerge. It is literally an asteroid that carries all the ingredients for life as we know it.
A look at the past. The stability of compounds like glucose and xylose in these samples, along with the surprising presence of ribose (which is typically very unstable), tells us that Bennu’s parent body had very specific water activity and chemical conditions shortly after the solar system formed.
As confirms NASA itselfwe are facing the strongest evidence that the building blocks of biology are not a miracle exclusive to Earth, but rather common products of the chemistry of the universe.
Images | NASA Hubble Space Telescope
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