Asteroid Bennu Holds the Building Blocks of Life
Asteroid Bennu Holds the Building Blocks of Life
Video Credit:
Data:
NASA,
SVS,
U. Arizona,
CSA,
York U.,
MDA;
Visualizer:
Kel Elkins (lead, SVS);
Text:
(Michigan Tech U.)
Explanation:
What can a space rock tell us about life on Earth?
NASA‘s
OSIRIS-REx spacecraft
made a careful approach
to the near-Earth asteroid
101955 Bennu in
October of 2020 to collect surface samples.
In September 2023, the robotic spaceship
returned these samples to Earth.
A recent
analysis has
shown, surprisingly,
that the samples contained 14 out of the 20 known
amino acids
that are the essential building blocks of life.
The presence of the amino acids re-introduces a big question:
Could life have originated in space?
However, the protein building blocks themselves held another surprise —
they contained an even mixture of
left-handed and right-handed amino acids —
in contrast to our Earth which only has left-handed ones.
This raises another big question:
Why does life on Earth have only left-handed amino acids?
Research on this is sure to continue.
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