Scientists have found uracil, one of the key building blocks for RNA, on the 200 million-mile-distant asteroid Ryugu
For the first time, scientists have found one of the key building blocks for RNA on an asteroid in space. The discovery indicates that the blueprints for life may have been brought to Earth from beyond our planet, and that rudimentary forms of life could exist elsewhere in the solar system.
Previous analyses of meteorites found on Earth revealed that the fallen space rocks contained the five nucleobases essential for building life as we know it, but scientists were unsure if they were there before they plummeted to Earth or got onto the meteorites by contamination with our atmosphere.
"As long as uracil and other nucleobases are present in space, it means the ingredients for nucleic acids [DNA and RNA] are present in that environment," lead author Yasuhiro Oba , an astrochemist at Hokkaido University in Japan, told Live Science in an email."In my personal opinion, it is difficult to exclude the possibility that some forms of life are present in extraterrestrial environments.
After touching down on the asteroid in 2018, Hayabusa2 scraped about 0.2 ounces from Ryugu's surface, before stowing the material in an airtight container and launching itself back to Earth on a fine-tuned trajectory. Other building blocks for life, including 15 different amino acids, were also discovered inside the returned sample.
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