Scientists have detected several sugars essential for life in the samples brought back from asteroid Bennu, NASA announced on Tuesday (Dec. 2).
Analyzing pristine fragments of the asteroid delivered to Earth by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023, a team led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Japan found ribose, a crucial building block of RNA, and glucose, an energy-rich sugar used by nearly all life on Earth.
Although the researchers stress that these sugars are not evidence of life itself, their presence suggests that the basic chemical ingredients needed for biology were common throughout the early solar system.
Source: www.space.com
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