No, we are not the only ones to populate the space. Or at least, we weren’t the first. In the samples of rocks and dust of the Asteroid Bennu, of 2018, unequivocal traces of life were found: amino acids, DNA bases and RNA microfracts. That there was organic matter on asteroids had been suspected for some time and traces had also been seen in the meteorites found on Earth, but this result is the definitive confirmation that asteroids contain the elements underlying life and that they may have brought them to earth. The discovery is published in two articles on Nature and Nature Astronomy.
In particular, the laboratory scientists discovered 14 of the amino acids present on Earth and all five bases, that is, the letters of the alphabet of life that are found in the DNA and RNA molecules. Mineral salts were also discovered which were formed in the celestial body from which Bennu originated, following an impact, and which allow you to have information on the chemistry of the primitive sun system. All these discoveries were possible because Bennu’s samples remained uncontaminated since, since they were taken from the Osiris-Rex probe, they have not undergone any alteration neither from contact with the atmosphere nor contact with the earth. In the article, the researchers coordinated by Daniel Glavi of the NASA Goddard Center discovered thousands of organic compounds, including 19 non -proteingenic amino acids, which are not involved in the structure of proteins and practically absent in the biology we know. The analyzes have also shown that Bennu is rich in nitrogen and ammonia compounds that have been formed billions of years ago in the outermost and colder regions of the Solar System, where ammonia is stable. There are phosphates that contain sodium and carbonates, sulphates, chlorides and fluorides rich in sodium. They probably trained following a process of evaporation that took place a lot of time on the celestial body from which Bennu was born and which, consequently contained water. “This demonstrates for the first time the abundance of the organic matter typical of life and confirms the expectations of the scientific community” explains the astrobiologist John Brucato, of the Observatory of Arcetri of the National Institute of Astrophysics.
«About 55 million years after the formation of the
Our sun system took place a large bombing of asteroids and comets and life on earth was born in that same period »notes Brucato. Those celestial bodies “brought organic and water to earth”.