(ORDO NEWS) — Samples from asteroid Ryugu contain amino acids that could have given rise to life on Earth, a new scientific study says.
Scientists studying samples brought to Earth in December 2020 by Japan‘s Hayabusa 2 mission have released the results of a long-term chemical analysis.
Samples collected from the surface and subsurface of asteroid Ruigu in 2018 and 2019 show what the near-Earth asteroid is made of, giving insight into the earliest days of our solar system’s formation.
“ The Ryugu material is the most primitive material in the solar system that we have ever studied,” Hisayoshi Yurimoto, professor of geoscience at Hokkaido University, said at the conference. “ Such asteroids, rich in water and organic materials, are a possible source of life on Earth, delivered to it billions of years ago . ”
Samples from Ryugu look more “primitive” and have a chemical composition more similar to early solar system material, Yurimoto added. This is due to the fact that they have not been changed as a result of interaction with the Earth’s environment,
The team’s analysis also found more than ten kinds of amino acids in the samples, including glycine and L-alanine, which are the building blocks of proteins made by living organisms based on the DNA code.
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