Scientists detect life’s building blocks in asteroid Bennu samples
An international team of scientists, including researchers from Japan, has reported the detection of all five nucleobases—adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil—in samples returned from asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. This discovery, published in Nature Astronomy, supports the theory that asteroids may have contributed essential building blocks of life to Earth, with the concentration of nitrogenous bases in Bennu samples being 5-10 times higher than those found in samples from asteroid Ryugu. The findings also include ammonia and nitrogen-rich organic matter, indicating that primitive asteroids could produce and preserve molecules crucial for the origin of life.