In samples of the asteroid Ryugu, scientists have found organic compounds that may indicate that elements important for the origin of life arrived on planet Earth in rocks from space billions of years ago.
In the rocks of the asteroid Ryugu, mined using the Japan Agency’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft in 2019, scientists have found the chemical compounds uracil and niacin.
“Our main finding is that uracil and niacin, both of which are biologically important, are already present in extraterrestrial environments and may have been supplied to the early Earth as a component of asteroids and meteorites. We think they played a role in prebiotics,” said astrophysicist Yasuhiro Oba from Hokkaido University in Japan.
These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that cosmic bodies such as comets, asteroids and meteorites bombarding the early Earth seeded the young planet with compounds that helped pave the way for the emergence of the first microbes.
