Posted on 02/01/2025 7:20:43 PM PST by Red Badger
Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life, as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as the “broth” for these compounds to interact and combine.
The findings do not show evidence for life itself, but they do suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of life were widespread across the early solar system, increasing the odds life could have formed on other planets and moons.
“NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission already is rewriting the textbook on what we understand about the beginnings of our solar system,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Asteroids provide a time capsule into our home planet’s history, and Bennu’s samples are pivotal in our understanding of what ingredients in our solar system existed before life started on Earth.”
In research papers published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy, scientists from NASA and other institutions shared results of the first in-depth analyses of the minerals and molecules in the Bennu samples, which OSIRIS-REx delivered to Earth in 2023.
Detailed in the Nature Astronomy paper, among the most compelling detections were amino acids – 14 of the 20 that life on Earth uses to make proteins – and all five nucleobases that life on Earth uses to store and transmit genetic instructions in more complex terrestrial biomolecules, such as DNA and RNA, including how to arrange amino acids into proteins.
Scientists also described exceptionally high abundances of ammonia in the Bennu samples. Ammonia is important to biology because it can react with formaldehyde, which also was detected in the samples, to form complex molecules, such as amino acids – given the right conditions. When amino acids link up into long chains, they make proteins, which go on to power nearly every biological function.
These building blocks for life detected in the Bennu samples have been found before in extraterrestrial rocks. However, identifying them in a pristine sample collected in space supports the idea that objects that formed far from the Sun could have been an important source of the raw precursor ingredients for life throughout the solar system.
“The clues we’re looking for are so minuscule and so easily destroyed or altered from exposure to Earth’s environment,” said Danny Glavin, a senior sample scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-lead author of the Nature Astronomy paper. “That’s why some of these new discoveries would not be possible without a sample-return mission, meticulous contamination-control measures, and careful curation and storage of this precious material from Bennu.”
While Glavin’s team analyzed the Bennu samples for hints of life-related compounds, their colleagues, led by Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, and Sara Russell, cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History Museum in London, looked for clues to the environment these molecules would have formed. Reporting in the journal Nature, scientists further describe evidence of an ancient environment well-suited to kickstart the chemistry of life.
Ranging from calcite to halite and sylvite, scientists identified traces of 11 minerals in the Bennu sample that form as water containing dissolved salts evaporates over long periods of time, leaving behind the salts as solid crystals.
Similar brines have been detected or suggested across the solar system, including at the dwarf planet Ceres and Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
Although scientists have previously detected several evaporites in meteorites that fall to Earth’s surface, they have never seen a complete set that preserves an evaporation process that could have lasted thousands of years or more. Some minerals found in Bennu, such as trona, were discovered for the first time in extraterrestrial samples.
“These papers really go hand in hand in trying to explain how life’s ingredients actually came together to make what we see on this aqueously altered asteroid,” said McCoy.
For all the answers the Bennu sample has provided, several questions remain. Many amino acids can be created in two mirror-image versions, like a pair of left and right hands. Life on Earth almost exclusively produces the left-handed variety, but the Bennu samples contain an equal mixture of both. This means that on early Earth, amino acids may have started out in an equal mixture, as well. The reason life “turned left” instead of right remains a mystery.
“OSIRIS-REx has been a highly successful mission,” said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA Goddard and co-lead author on the Nature Astronomy paper. “Data from OSIRIS-REx adds major brushstrokes to a picture of a solar system teeming with the potential for life. Why we, so far, only see life on Earth and not elsewhere, that’s the truly tantalizing question.”
Microscope image showing crystals of hydrated sodium carbonate (purple highlights) in a sample of material from asteroid BennuRob Wardell/Tim McCoy/Smithsonian Institution; colorization: Heather Roper/University of Arizona
NASA Goddard provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. NASA Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on the OSIRIS-REx mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex
I have all the ingredients but still can not make a good souffle.
I have all the ingredients for creating a simple cake in our kitchen, increasing the odds that such could have formed in other kitchens and cupboards. By themselves, under the just-right conditions.
To believe that an exceedingly vast, systematically ordered universe, exquisitely finely tuned for complex life with its profound intricate complexity and extensive diversity, can be all a result of purely natural processes requires much faith. More so i submit, than that the universe logically testifies to design, requiring a First Cause (at the least), that of a being of supreme power and intelligence being behind the existence of energy and organization of matter, and laws regarding the same.
The potential for life is built into the very structure of matter from the tiniest subatomic particle to atoms themselves and the way they combine with other atoms.
Atoms are an erector set for life.
Of course the asteroid had “a mix of life’s ingredients” since it was composed of atoms.
Life primarily contains whole grain oat flour, corn flour, sugar, whole wheat flour, calcium carbonate, salt, baking soda, tocopherols, and B vitamins. It also includes allergens such as wheat and gluten.
Perhaps out there, there are organisms that thrive on sulphur dioxide and hydrochloric acid while oxygen and water are deadly poisons to them.
We don't have a clue but we certainly have a bias.
We need look no further that our own oceans for that...........
Not very scientific, but rather than spending all your time
trying to prove a random association of all this stuff created life on our very special Earth.
Why not try to figure out how God put us all together,
using all this stuff? It sure as heck isn’t random,
it is way too ordered.
My religion teaches that I’m made in the “Image of God”.
It may be a physical image, but that image houses a soul
that transcends the physical. Because my physical image will die. I don’t believe the soul does.
As for are there others?
I think God put us far enough apart that we will never interact in our euclidean space.
“The reason life “turned left” instead of right remains a mystery.”
So it’s one of life’s eternal mysteries…and we wonder why that happens every single day.
Very true. Some interesting organisms are found around fumaroles and ocean bottom vents. They rely on sulphur compounds.
The entire Universe was created just for us to enjoy and explore.
When we become spirit being like the angels, distance will be of no consequence. We will be able to traverse the entire Universe in the blink of an eye.............
Thanks Red Badger.
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Formaldehyde is a poison and I have not read any reports of life forming on any product containing formaldehyde nor embalmed bodies.
“ When we become spirit being like the angels, distance will be of no consequence. We will be able to traverse the entire Universe in the blink of an eye.............”
I’m with you on that but I’d still like to travel in a faster than light starship to at least Alpha Centauri in a short time frame while still in a physical body. 👍😎
Computer says no.............. Einstein says no...............
#2 Humans were made from leftovers...
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