Scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History have revealed that samples from the asteroid Bennu contain minerals and salts formed by the evaporation of water, reinforcing the theory that asteroids may have carried essential ingredients for life on Earth.
Water and minerals in samples from asteroid Bennu
The study, published in the journal Nature , details the discovery of a sequence of minerals never before seen in extraterrestrial samples. These include water-bearing sodium carbonate compounds similar to the salt crusts found in dry terrestrial lake beds. These minerals suggest that Bennu’s parent asteroid, formed 4.5 billion years ago, once hosted deposits of liquid water.
NASA collected about 120 grams of material from Bennu through the OSIRIS-REx mission , which returned the samples to Earth for study in 2023. Smithsonian researchers used scanning electron microscopy to analyze minuscule fragments of the asteroid, revealing traces of water trapped in minerals. This discovery supports the hypothesis that extraterrestrial brines provided a suitable environment for the synthesis of primitive organic compounds .
Implications for the search for life
A NASA statement explains that the discovery of these minerals on Bennu suggests that similar environments could exist on other celestial bodies, such as Ceres and Enceladus, where sodium carbonate has been detected. In addition, another parallel study published in Nature Astronomy confirms the presence of amino acids and nucleobases in the samples, compounds essential for the formation of DNA and RNA.
Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at the National Museum of Natural History and co-author of the study, said this is a key step toward understanding how the basic ingredients of life were assembled in space.
We now know that the essential elements of life interacted in complex ways on asteroids.
he explained.
Samples from Bennu will continue to be analyzed in the coming years, with the goal of expanding our knowledge of prebiotic chemistry in the solar system . This discovery, in addition to delving deeper into the evolution of asteroids, could help us better understand how Earth’s oceans and atmosphere formed.
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Source: EurekAlert
Photo: NASA