Are we alone in space? It is a question that scientists have been seeking for centuries. And it has not been answered for a long time, but new discoveries can ultimately release the secrets of aliens.
Thanks to OSIRIS-REX, a NASA spacecraft that landed on an asteroid more than 60 million kilometers (40 million miles) away in 2018. However, Osiris did not just land on the asteroid. He also collected Bennu samples and returned them to Earth in 2023.
This is not just an engineering feat, but scientists “1 /1 million” asteroid. That’s because Bennu is not just a mere cosmic rock, but because its carbon composition is abundant and close to Earth, it is virtually early solar time capsules.
So what did the researchers learn accurately? According to two recently released papers – one in the journal Natural Astronomy and one in Nature – the survey results may be forced to rewrite the story of how life began.
What did you find in Bennu?
The headline discovery was that the important building blocks of life were found in the Bennu sample.
Thousands of organic molecular compounds confirmed the presence of 14 of the 20 protein amino acids existing on Earth. In addition, 19 non-protein amino acids and five biological nucleic acids were found.
Other asteroid samples that have fallen to Earth contain some of these materials, but this is the richest sample seen so far.
But that’s not all. Evidence that salt minerals were once present in the sample indicated the potential existence of water combined with important amino acids raises questions about the possibility of life outside Earth.
“We often talk about the building blocks of life. These essential building blocks seem to have been created on Earth. What about the extraterrestrial ones?” Sean McMahon, the co-director of the British Space Biology Center, said in an interview with BBC Science Focus.
Source: www.sciencefocus.com
