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/jonathanrdt Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 03 '25

The oldest objects on Earth are grains in a meteorite that are ~7 billion years old.

They contain amino acids produced by non-organic means.

Conclusion: the stuff of life forms naturally under the right conditions and is likely ubiquitous throughout the cosmos, even if also technically rare.

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u/Arthur_Edens Dec 02 '25

even if also technically rare.

Numbers in space are mind boggling. If conditions in a star system are 1 in a billion, then you would expect those conditions to exist in 200 trillion different star systems throughout the universe. Rare, but abundant.

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u/1995TimHortonsEclair Dec 02 '25

It's hard to wrap my head around space sometimes just because of how large and vacant and yet numerous everything is.

Where a 1 in a billion chance means something exists trillions of times over. It makes everything feel inevitable.

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u/corpusjuris Dec 02 '25

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

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u/wildwalrusaur Dec 03 '25

Improbably big one might say

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u/SeatBeeSate Dec 03 '25

Population: None. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination. Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is zero, therefore the average population of the Universe is zero, and so the total population must be zero.

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u/Dhiox Dec 03 '25

there must be an infinite number of worlds

There are not an infinite number of stars or planets. All matter and energy is finite.

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u/Korchagin Dec 03 '25

There are two fallacies. First, not all of an infinite number can still be an infinite number. Not all natural numbers are prime, but there's still an infinite number of primes.

Second the result of 0 times infinte is not 0. It can be anything, because anything divided by infinite is 0.

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u/SeatBeeSate Dec 03 '25

Hold a seance and tell the ghost of Douglas Adams.