Our solar system contains planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets, but only one world is known to have life. Scientists have long been discussing whether the earth is really unique. Perhaps our planet has an appropriate combination of materials, conditions, and timing for life to appear.
However, pinch of grit from a distant asteroid collected by the NASA spaceship holds hints that our planet may not be so special. The researcher team reported in a Nature magazine on Wednesday that the asteroid known as Bennu contains abundant organic molecules, including many important lives. The chemistry that produced them may be happening today in the moon of Jupiter and Saturn.
Daniel Gravin, a senior scientist in NASA's Goddadde Space Flight Center and co -author of two papers, states:
In 2016, NASA launched the robot probe OSIRIS-REX to Bennu to collect clues to the birth of the solar system. About 4.5 billion years ago, the neighborhood of our sun began as dust and ice clouds. The planet gradually appeared in the clouds and went on a different path within billions of years. For example, Jupiter has become a gas giant, but Venus has become a rocky scorched landscape.
However, some of the primitive tile BLE continued to go around the sun and became an asteroid today. For decades, scientists have been able to study asteroids only when fragments have fallen to Earth as MET stones. One of these most important things was landing in 1969 near Martison, Australia. The researcher who examined it was surprised to find amino acids, a protein components. (Our cells make thousands of proteins using 20 amino acids.)
This discovery has increased the possibility that an object from the universe has supplied amino acids and other components to early earth for life. In order to change these compounds into the first cell, chemical reactions may have been performed at ponds and deep -sea vent.
However, MET stones can only provide only the blurred records of the early solar system. Before the scientists can see them, they travel and crush the atmosphere. After that, they are sitting on the ground for millions of years before they are discovered. Meanwhile, chemical reactions with the earth may change the MET stone further.
NASA researchers have inferred that traveling to Benne can collect untouched materials. The OSIRIS-REX probe arrived on an asteroid with a width of 1,850 feet in 2020, scooped rocks and dirt, and returned to the earth.
On September 24, 2023, Osiris Rex parached the Utah Desert. NASA researchers have immediately stored nitrogen -primitive bennne samples so as not to react to the earth's atmosphere.
Dr. Gravin and his colleagues later began to catalogs the internal compounds. They found 16,000 kinds of organic molecules. One of the most notable is 16 amino acids used by our cells to produce protein. Our DNA, on the other hand, is built from four units called nuclear base. Benne's rocks contained all four. In order to make protein, our cells copy genes from DNA to similar molecules called RNA. RNA uses one of the three DNA nucleo bass and one of the proprietary ulasil. Benne also contains ulasil.
Bennu minerals provided important clues to how the asteroids were formed and how the amino acids and nucleic acid strikes developed on the way.
Scientists concluded that asteroids are much larger object relics. This is a mixture of rock and ice that probably measured the width of 60 miles. Beyond the orbit of Jupiter, it was formed in the outer solar system.
Despite being far from the sun, Benne's core contained radioactive factors, so it was warm. Dr. Gravin and his colleagues estimate that the inside may have reached room temperature.
The ice was dissolved in salted salt water in Benne's parent object. It may have filled the hidden chamber and slied in the basement tunnel. Under these conditions, ammonia and other compounds could be changed to amino acids and nucleic acid strikes.
Bennu's core may have been in that state for millions of years. Eventually, the radioactive heat was depleted, but ammonia may have acted like an antifreeze, and when cooled, it helps to keep salt water in the form of liquid.
Eventually, researchers suspect that gravity disorder from Jupiter throws their core from the original orbit. It ended between Mars and Earth, where the impact broke a little later. In the past 65 million years, I have returned to the mountain of the tile RUB, where the fragments are floating.
David Damer, a space biologist at the California University of Santa Cruz, said that he had not been involved in the dissertation, providing a new level of insights on the early solar system chemistry. “These will be a classic,” he predicted.
Mark Schney Gurt, a space biologist at Wichita State University, agreed. “There is almost no more important research to understand the origin of life in the solar system,” he said.
New discoveries suggest that the conditions are right for most of the early solar system for creating molecules required for life. “I don't need a planet or a big moon,” said Tim McCoy, a curator of the MET stone at the Sumison Natural History Museum and a co -author of the research. “These are small bodies on the outside of the solar system.”
The Bennu team keeps looking at undetermined materials from the asteroid sample to check if more complex compounds are lurking. Some amino acids may probably have been combined with primitive protein -like molecules. The reaction may combine nucleic acid strikes with a short chain. This is the primitive pioneer of our genes.
Researchers are ready for more surprisingly from Benne, but they do not expect to find evidence of full -fledged life in their charm. With only a million years of warmth, the ice world probably didn't have enough time to generate primitive cells.
“I don't think I went there,” said Dr. McCoy. “I think it went somewhere on the way to life.”
However, there may have been more opportunities for the same chemistry to live in other ice worlds. Ceres, a 580 -mile dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, is still swaying inside it. Enceladus, a 310 -miles of Saturn's Saturn, has ice -like ice, surrounding many salty sea of the same mineral as Bennu. In October, NASA began a survey of Jupiter's moon Europe.
“These will be an absolutely important target,” said Dr. Grabin.
Nilton Renno, a planetary scientist at the University of Michigan, said that he was not involved in Bennne's research, but the survey had opened the possibility of an exotic more than he had seriously explored. “It can open our eyes and think more about life,” he said.
If the vast flock of BRINY LITTLE WORLDS creates biological precursors, they may have mixed them as they collide with each other. The heat of the impact can promote more chemicals, even more complicated molecules in the interior, and even living cells.
“Did your life start there?” Dr. Leno asked. “I'm open to it. I like crazy ideas.”
