Tag: prebiotic chemistry

  • Did Life on Earth Start in Space? What Scientists Are Finding in Asteroid Samples

    Did Life on Earth Start in Space? What Scientists Are Finding in Asteroid Samples

    Life had to start somewhere. Before the first cell could reproduce, before DNA could carry instructions and before anything resembling a living organism existed, chemistry had to somehow assemble enough useful information to get the process moving. Scientists still do not know exactly how that happened, and a new calculation has put some extraordinary numbers…

  • All Five DNA Building Blocks Found on Asteroid Ryugu for the First Time

    All Five DNA Building Blocks Found on Asteroid Ryugu for the First Time

    Something extraordinary arrived on Earth in December 2020, sealed inside a capsule that had traveled millions of kilometers through space. JAXA’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft delivered 5.4 grams of dust collected from the surface of asteroid Ryugu, a carbon-rich body orbiting between Earth and Mars. Scientists had already found organic molecules in earlier analyses of that dust,…