The black particles from an asteroid some 300 million kilometres away look unremarkable, like pieces of charcoal, but they hold a component of life itself.
Scientists have discovered the chemical compound uracil, one of the building blocks of RNA, in just 10 milligrammes of material from the asteroid Ryugu, according to new research.
Hayabusa-2 was launched in 2014 and returned to Earth's orbit in late 2020 with a capsule containing the sample from the asteroid. "Since every meteorite has landed on the surface of the Earth where microorganisms are ubiquitously present everywhere, it always makes the interpretation on the origin of such biologically important molecules in meteorites more complex," said Yasuhiro Oba, associate professor at Hokkaido University and an author of the research.Testing the Ryugu samples was a multi-phase process that began by putting them in hot water, like"brewing coffee or tea", Oba said.
A long exposure shows the light trail of a re-entry capsule carrying samples from an asteroid on December 6, 2020"We expect it plays a role for prebiotic evolution and possibly the emergence of the first life," he said.
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