Astronomy Picture of the Day - Asteroid Bennu Holds the Building Blocks of Life

NASA ^ | 12 Feb, 2025 | Video Credit: Data: NASA, SVS, U. Arizona, CSA, York U., MDA; Visualizer: Kel Elkins (lead, SVS); Te

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: What can a space rock tell us about life on Earth? NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a careful approach to the near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu in October of 2020 to collect surface samples. In September 2023, the robotic spaceship returned these samples to Earth. A recent analysis has shown, surprisingly, that the samples contained 14 out of the 20 known amino acids that are the essential building blocks of life. The presence of the amino acids re-introduces a big question: Could life have originated in space? However, the protein building blocks themselves held another surprise -- they contained an even mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids -- in contrast to our Earth which only has left-handed ones. This raises another big question: Why does life on Earth have only left-handed amino acids? Research on this is sure to continue.

[MtnClimber]

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Today's image is a video at the source link.

[MtnClimber]

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Today's image is a video at the source link.

[reasonisfaith]

Holds the building blocks of life.

Keep in mind, it’s the Builder who actually does the building.

[No name given]

Exactly.

[Verginius Rufus]

There was an interesting talk on C-SPAN not long ago featuring Marco Livio, co-author of the book Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life, on whether life exists anywhere else in the universe besides the earth. His conclusion was "we don't know."

He said the three basic questions in science are:

1. The origin of the universe
2. The origin of life
3. The origin of consciousness

[The Louiswu]

CHON, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen. There’s a LOT of that all over the universe but only God can provide the spark to turn those elements into life.

[Stosh]

“. . . protein building blocks themselves held another surprise — they contained an even mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids .. . .”

The bigger surprise would have been if the amino acids found on that asteroid were only of one form. Amino acids generated by natural physical forces always come (so far as we know) as a mixture of both mirror-image forms; only amino acids produced by living systems come in a single handedness..