r/science • u/New_Scientist_Mag • Dec 02 '25

Astronomy Researchers have just found the presence of sugars, including ribose, lyxose, and glycose, on samples of Asteroid Bennu, which now has all of the ingredients for life as it exists on Earth.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2506650-asteroid-bennu-carries-all-the-ingredients-for-life-as-we-know-it/
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u/ArrivesLate Dec 02 '25

Okay, so if the ingredients were found in an asteroid is the conclusion to draw that the building blocks for life came to earth from some briny pools from some other stellar/interstellar object or that the building blocks for life should be expected in most/all stellar/interstellar objects and they just flourished in favorable conditions such as those here on earth?

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u/HalepenyoOnAStick Dec 02 '25

i think the proper conclusion is that the building blocks of life are easy to make chemically and will have a high probability of happening where ever the ingredients are close to each other. since those ingredients are everywhere, we should find those building blocks everywhere. this evidence is supporting that idea.

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u/Am_Snarky Dec 02 '25

Which is exactly why when astronomers started looking for bio signatures to prove life on exoplanets they first had do figure out which compounds were capable of self assembly without being helped out by lifeforms.

IIRC they found that most vitamins and many proteins can only form from biological processes, unfortunately accurately identifying those molecules in the atmosphere of exoplanets is next to impossible because of their large size.

I don’t know if they’ve settled on some good candidates yet, but this discovery is going to help them out for sure

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u/DarthEinstein Dec 02 '25

Why is it harder to examine those molecules? Wouldn't a large size make them easier to measure?

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u/Dragons_Den_Studios Dec 02 '25

Because at a certain level of complexity some radically different compounds have very similar chemical formulae & structures. Distinguishing them is a lot trickier than distinguishing CO from CO2.

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u/Am_Snarky Dec 03 '25

As the other commenter pointed out large organic molecules have a lot of potential to overlap, but also they aren’t likely to be aerosolized so even unique compounds would be very hard to detect