The deserts of Utah are known for the alleged foreign visitors, but in September 2023 a real estraterrestrial was not more influential. The truck tire capsule capsule was invaluable to load: more than 120 grams of the early history of the solar system. Three years before the NASA’s Osiris-Rex SpaceCraft took these samples From the surface of Asteroid Bennu Misfortune to deal with the earth. It was hopeless that the black coal material would help show Solar system“And with him, Earth and the life of our planet-Formed. Soon after the recovery of the Bennu samples, scientists began to study the teams eagerly in highly specialized laboratories.
Unique preliminary results of this work, At the beginning of last yearNow they have been more accurate and definitive, confirming the tremendous scientific value of samples. The two studies published on January 29, 2025 show also on the dark and cold regions of the solar system, with many chemical processes that had created many lifetime buildings.
At the time, more than 4.5 million years ago, the new heavenly bodies repeatedly collided over and over again Chaotic game of primordial billiardsTurns together another smithereens or large objects. Blessed was somewhere in a mix: at some point out of a wider body of heaven, he was a victim of a massive impact. But, signs without evidence named signs survived in the revenue in the youth of the solar system, preserved in cold spaces.
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Bennu parent body was apparently a lot of water, as described A paper Appears in the magazine Nature. He evaporated a piece of water and left behind a salty salt. According to A fair paper Published Nature astronomy, This brine had thousands of organic compounds, 14 of the 20 amino acids found in land organisms, as well as all the nucleotidal bases that make up our DNA and RNA. This means that the basic molecules of life existed in our solar system almost from the beginning.
Tim McCoy, the main author of the author Nature The study and meteorite of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum took part in the initial analyzes of the Bennu samples who have already reached the ground and began shortly. The many minerals that reveal these first looks are no longer mysterious; were clearly found to be debris of evapointed water deposits.
The original body came in Bath, with the oceans like the earth not covered. “The world was wet,” McCoy said, but “It’s probably more likely … bold world” with oceans or under the surface. According to McCoy, water deposits were probably short durations and thickened a few meters. This means that this reduces the effects of its influence: “Finding evidence of clay, salt and ancient brin” is not only the components of the first steps of life were present for such steps, McCoy said.
The salt salt of Bennu had a very narrowed salt on earth and resemble the “primordia soup” passionately in clean water and clean water Perhaps first prepared life life? This was the question Nature astronomy Studies, Daniel Glavin, heads the NASA scientist and the Osiris-Rex Organics Analysisis team, which includes some members from around the world. In search of organic compounds in the short material of Bennu, he and his colleagues found most of the nucleotides that are needed to live on earth and land. Such composites were explained in meteorites that fell to our planet, but unlike these cases, the samples of Bennu were protected from ground pollution and the heat of high heat heat through the earth’s atmosphere.
According to certain theories, the pioneers of Early Life on Earth were imported through the asteroids than home times. Glavin sees the discovery of organic molecules to strengthen these ideas. In fact, the truth of the blocks of molecular buildings of life were so widespread it was a conclusive evidence that “life could be started somewhere else on earth.”
Bennu Osiris-Rex analyzes precious samples are constantly and use many modern methods in laboratories around the world. One of these is the Schwiete Cosmochemistry Laboratory in Gorhe University in Germany, a powerful electronic transmission microscope (TEM) that can be used to study the best structures with great accuracy. To do this, a small amount of the Bennu sample is the only temperature outside the US. “It is especially useful for water rock-interacting studies, a large part of this information is recorded in the nanosko,” Sheri Singerling, a researcher at the University of Goethe University, Nature Study. However, his work has only stressed a part of the puzzle: “The more the researchers with different experts in these samples have, the better,” Singerling says.
In total, sample tests are sketching a strange image of the mysterious body of the Bennu parents. Compared to the asteroid, formed from many small pieces, the parent body was “greater and denser”. When massive effects explode, the mats would become space, this parent body would also lose volatile components, such as liquids, while supposedly excavating some materials. In Bennu, such waste seemed apparently. “When we study the surface of Bennu and the nearest surface, we can see materials that are well formed in the body of his parents,” Singerling says.
Bennu orbates the sun to the distance near the ground, but the body of the original sky must be formed much further. But how far? “Some common features in meteorites, such as chokes or calculations that are calcus and aluminum are,” he explained the singers. Such structures shape at high temperatures, especially next to the sun. “This is, as well as isotopes and organic substances in Bennu, it is the origin of the outer origin of the parent’s body,” he added. McCoy also locates the origins of Bennu Fried Fresh Frigida. Certainly, the ice should form a steady, “so likely (at) a position of Jupiter or beyond.” The presence of ammonia volatile in the samples is plentiful in the cold regions of our solar system (Bennu origin). “
In addition to being so connected with contaminants, Singerling is not common, we have the results of the two missions: Hayabusa2 to Asteroid Ryugu and Osiris-Rex Bennu. ” The Japanese Zunda Hayabusa2 brought almost 5.5 grams asteroid material on Earth 2020. The two missions samples are very similar to each other and are very similar to the materials found in meteorites called Ci Chondres. “They are rarely rare in the meteorite collections of the earth,” Singerling, partly because Ci Chondritak are so delicate, that they usually do not suffer from passionate through the atmosphere of the earth. “This tells us that our collections are naughty and these types of samples are common than the restored in the ground,” he said. This, he and others say it is another reason Asteroid-sample-return missions They are essential.
And there may be more surprises in Osiris-Rex at the store. “We are still in the early stages of the study of the Bennu samples,” says Glavin. His team is studying much more from the asteroid that weighs around six grams, to perceive other organic molecules, such as sugars, peptides “and perhaps nucleotides (there) DNA and RNA.” Glavin’s goal in the body of Bennu How the organic molecule formed is to achieve a more detailed idea.
On the one hand, studying studies how to become a life molecule. On the other hand, they showed the appropriate conditions for this growth. And it can already be said that such conditions seem much more frequent than before it seems beyond the ground. For McCoy, therefore, this is the most open question, so this ancient brath is now compared to the modern salts in the bodies of the solar system, like Saturnor’s Moon Enceladus. “In other words, there are still blocks of life buildings in our planetary neighborhood and They turn on the “second genesis” of life At the benefit of any other condition of the solar system? “This question will not answer until these places will visit the samples until these places can be visited,” says McCoyk.
Scientists learn these small pieces of Bennu for many years, without certainly achieving more views about the history of the solar system, and maybe life itself. But it is clear, but many, many other heavenly bodies will be revealed only with new missions. “All the discoveries create more questions,” Singerling says. “That’s the beauty of science and search for unanswered answers.”
This article originally appeared Science spectrum and reproduced with permission.
