The components of life on Earth came from outside.. Space samples reveal
Two organic components necessary for living organisms were found in samples brought from the asteroid Diogo, in a discovery that supports the idea that some of the components necessary for the emergence of life arrived on Earth on the back of rocks from space billions of years ago.
Scientists said on Tuesday they had identified the presence of uracil and niacin in rocks obtained by the Japan Space Agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft from two sites on the asteroid Diogo in 2019.
Uracil is a chemical component of RNA, a molecule that directs how organisms build and function. Niacin, also called vitamin B3, is essential for metabolism.
The Diogo samples, which look like dark gray debris, were transported 250 million kilometers to Earth and returned to the surface of our planet in a sealed space capsule that landed in 2020 in the remote part of Australia, after which the samples it brought back in Japan were analyzed.
Scientists have long thought about the conditions necessary for the emergence of life after the formation of the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. The new discoveries are consistent with the hypothesis that bodies such as comets, asteroids and meteorites that fell like bombs on Earth in the early stages of their lives filled the newly created planet with chemical compounds that contributed to paving the way for the emergence of the first microbes.
Meteorites are rich in carbon
Scientists previously discovered important organic molecules in carbon-rich meteorites found on Earth. However, the question remained whether these space rocks were contaminated with these particles through exposure to the Earth's environment after landing on it.
For his part, Yashiro Oba, an astrophysicist from Hokkaido University in Japan, said, “Our main discovery is that uracil and niacin, both of which are vitally important, are certainly present in space environments and may have arrived on Earth early as elements involved in the formation of asteroids and meteorites. We think that they played a role in the pre-life on Earth and may (played a role) in the emergence of life on Earth.
Uba is a lead author on the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
brought to earth
Ohba added, "These particles were brought from Diogu in their pure space state... They were collected directly on Diogu and then brought to Earth, and finally to laboratories, without exposure to any terrestrial pollutants."
The researchers extracted uracil, niacin and some other organic compounds from Diogo's samples by conducting analyses to separate the materials into their original components.
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