Asteroid That Could Hit Earth Also Carries Life’s Seeds

Scientists studying samples from asteroid Bennu have made a discovery that feels equally hopeful and unsettling. The same space rock that carries a small but real chance of striking Earth in the future also contains some of the most fundamental ingredients to life.

The finding comes from material collected by NASA’s ORISIS-REx mission in 2023. When researchers examined the samples, they identified bio-essential sugars, including ribose and glucose, marking the first time these key sugars have ever been detected in an extraterrestrial object.

This is a major milestone as ribose forms the backbone of RNA, the molecule many scientists believe played a central role in life’s earliest origins, while glucose fuels living organisms on Earth. 

Their presence suggests the early solar system was already seeded with the chemistry needed to spark biology long before Earth’s surface cooled.

According to the team led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, Bennu now appears to contain all three critical building blocks of life: sugars, amino acids, and nucleobases. As the authors explained:

“Our confident detection in Bennu of abundant glucose – the hexose molecule that is life’s common energy source- and other hexoses indicates that they were present in the early solar system. (…) Thus, all three crucial building blocks of life would have reached the prebiotic Earth and other potentially habitable planets.”

Previous analyses had already identified every nucleobase used in DNA and RNA, as well as phosphate. The new detection of ribose completes the set. In other words, Bennu carries the entire life’s starter kit. According to the team:

“All five of the canonical nucleobases in DNA and RNA, and phosphate, were previously found in Bennu samples. Our detection of ribose means that all the components of RNA are present in Bennu.”

Rock Rich in Life… and Risk

But Bennu’s story has another twist. The same asteroid brimming with life’s ingredients is also classified as potentially hazardous, with a 1-in-2,700 chance of colliding with Earth on September 24, 2182.

The odds are low but not dismissible, especially given Bennu’s size and trajectory. Tiny forces, such as sunlight heating its surface, influence its future path, making long-term predictions difficult and keeping the scientific community watchful.

For now, Bennu remains a scientific treasure. Its chemistry suggests that prebiotic molecules may have been widespread throughout the early solar system and could have been delivered to young planets through impacts. If confirmed, that strengthens a longstanding theory that life on Earth may have begun with ingredients that fell from the sky.

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