- 14 Mar 2002
- 21,051
- 18,903
Fascinating findings! Furukawa Yoshihiro, an associate professor of Tohoku University's Graduate School of Science, said it is becoming more certain that the ingredients for life came from space:
A team of scientists from Japan and the United States reported that they had identified six different sugars in rock and dust taken from an asteroid, a result they said added weight to the idea that the basic materials for life were present beyond Earth. They examined roughly 0.6 grams of the samples gathered by a NASA spacecraft from the asteroid Bennu.
According to the researchers, the sugars detected included ribose, which forms part of RNA and helps carry genetic information, and glucose, a familiar energy source for living organisms. This was the first time any sugars had been found in material from Bennu. Earlier analyses of the same samples had already revealed amino acids used to build proteins on Earth, along with five nucleobases involved in storing and transmitting genetic instructions in DNA and RNA.
While scientists had previously found certain sugars in meteorites that had landed on Earth, the group said the new results offered firm support for the idea that the chemical building blocks of life existed outside the planet and may have reached Earth through falling meteorites.
Read more:
www.nasa.gov
en.wikipedia.org
A team of scientists from Japan and the United States reported that they had identified six different sugars in rock and dust taken from an asteroid, a result they said added weight to the idea that the basic materials for life were present beyond Earth. They examined roughly 0.6 grams of the samples gathered by a NASA spacecraft from the asteroid Bennu.
According to the researchers, the sugars detected included ribose, which forms part of RNA and helps carry genetic information, and glucose, a familiar energy source for living organisms. This was the first time any sugars had been found in material from Bennu. Earlier analyses of the same samples had already revealed amino acids used to build proteins on Earth, along with five nucleobases involved in storing and transmitting genetic instructions in DNA and RNA.
While scientists had previously found certain sugars in meteorites that had landed on Earth, the group said the new results offered firm support for the idea that the chemical building blocks of life existed outside the planet and may have reached Earth through falling meteorites.
Read more:
Sugars, ‘Gum,’ Stardust Found in NASA's Asteroid Bennu Samples - NASA
The asteroid Bennu continues to provide new clues to scientists’ biggest questions about the formation of the early solar system and the origins of life. As
www.nasa.gov
