Tests performed on samples of the asteroid Ryugu taken by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 in 2020 suggest that the necessary ingredients for the development of life on Earth could come from space.
Scientists have been analyzing the samples since they arrived on Earth in December 2020 and recently discovered that they contain amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.
The findings are especially important because they suggest that life on Earth could have begun thanks to ingredients that hit our planet as a result of asteroid impacts. This could have important implications for the search for life on other planets, as it suggests that life cannot be unique to Earth and could have evolved somewhere else in the universe.
Experts note that more tests and analyzes are still needed to confirm these findings, but this represents an important step in understanding how life on Earth could have arisen.
According to a recent study published in the journal Nature, scientists have found that fragments of the asteroid Ryugu contain two organic compounds essential for life: uracil and niacin.
Uracil is an organic compound that is part of the DNA and RNA nucleic acids and is necessary for protein synthesis and cell replication. For its part, niacin is a B-vitamin complex that plays an important role in energy metabolism and DNA repair.
“Our main conclusion is that uracil and niacin, which are of biological importance, are indeed present in the extraterrestrial environment. and may have reached the early Earth as asteroids and meteorites,” said Yasuhiro Oba, one of the lead authors of the study and a professor of astrochemistry at Hokkaido University in Japan.
The expert pointed out that according to the hypotheses, these elements play an extremely important role in the evolution of prebiotic organisms, which are the precursors of life on our planet.
“Ryugu molecules have been discovered in pristine extraterrestrial environments.. The samples were taken directly from the Ryugu asteroid and returned to Earth and then to the laboratory without any contact with terrestrial pollutants,” the expert added.
Source: La Opinion
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