The discovery of a basic building block for life on a distant planet… What is its name? (video)

Scientists discovered one of the building blocks of RNA on the asteroid Ryugu in space.

Studies indicate that the blueprints for life may have been brought to Earth from outside our planet, and that primitive forms of life could exist elsewhere in the solar system.

The scientific magazine “Life Science” stated that the researchers found traces of uracil, one of the basic building blocks of RNA, as well as “vitamin B3” and a number of other organic molecules on the surface of space rocks.

Scientists pointed out that previous analyzes of meteorites on Earth revealed that the falling space rocks contained the five nuclear bases necessary to build life.

“As long as uracil and other nucleobases are in space, it means that the components of nucleic acids are in that environment,” said lead author Yasuhiro Ohba, associate professor at Hokkaido University in Japan.

He continued, “In my personal opinion, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that some forms of life exist in extraterrestrial environments.”

To make this first discovery of its kind, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) sent the Hayabusa2 spacecraft on a 200-million-mile journey to Ryugu, a carbonaceous asteroid packed with carbon-rich organic matter.

According to the researchers, it is likely that a large part of the contents of the Ryugu that have accumulated, may have originated from the same nebula from which the sun and the planets of our solar system were formed about 4.6 billion years ago.

The researchers believe that the amino acids and nucleotides were formed when the interstellar ice was emitted by intense cosmic rays, which led to the breaking of simple molecules trapped inside and reconfiguring them into more complex configurations, according to the scientific journal “livescience”.

Scientists confirmed that Ryugu is not the only space rock. In 2021, NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft collected a rock sample from another diamond-shaped asteroid called Bennu. (Sputnik)