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Elements essential to life found on the asteroid Ryugu

2022-06-10T06:59:57.638Z


“Their detection proves that at least some of these building blocks of life on Earth could have been formed in environments


Amino acids are basic elements of life on Earth.

Finding out where they come from is a kind of holy grail for science.

However, some of them were discovered in samples of material taken from the asteroid Ryugu by the Japanese space probe Hayabusa-2 in 2019, according to a Japanese scientific study published on Friday.

Read alsoHayabusa 2 will deliver asteroid dust to Earth: the underside of a six-year odyssey

“The discovery of amino acids capable of forming proteins is significant, because Ryugu was not exposed to the Earth's biosphere, unlike meteorites,” according to this study by researchers led by Okayama University. .

Therefore, "their detection proves that at least some of these elementary bricks of life on Earth could have been formed in space environments", adds the same source.

Hayabusa-2, a mission rich in lessons

The researchers said they had identified 23 different types of amino acids in 5.4 grams of black rock and dust samples collected on Ryugu by the Japanese probe Hayabusa-2, whose capsule returned to Earth at the end of 2020 with its precious cargo after a six-year mission.

Discovered in 1999, the asteroid Ryugu (“Dragon Palace” in Japanese) is located more than 300 million kilometers from our planet and is less than 900 meters in diameter.

Scientists believe that some of the asteroid's material was created around five million years after the birth of our solar system and was not heated above 100 degrees Celsius.

According to another study published Thursday in the American journal Science, the material taken from Ryugu has “a chemical composition that more closely resembles that of the photosphere of the Sun” than that of meteorites.

The Ryugu samples "give reason to believe that the amino acids were brought to Earth from space", confirms Kensei Kobayashi, an astrobiologist and professor emeritus at Yokohama National University interviewed by AFP.

Another theory is that amino acids were created in Earth's early atmosphere via lightning.

Source: leparis

All tech articles on 2022-06-10

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