Asteroid Bennu samples have 14/20 amino acids found in life on Earth

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02472-9

by LarsDu88 • 1 year ago

5 3 1 year ago

LarsDu882• 1 year ago

Hopefully the Deepseek news hasn't obscured the discoveries from this space mission. 14/20 amino acids found in life on Earth were recovered from the samples from that mission. 33 amino acids overall. Unlike with terrestrial amino acids found in living things, there are equal number of left and right handed amino acids.

This has big implications for understanding the rise of life in our solar system, and perhaps the potential rise of life in the cosmos.

ahazred8ta• 1 year ago

big implications for understanding the rise of life

That's quite a stretch. We've known since the 1950s that amino acids form spontaneously in a hydrogen-rich environment with ultraviolet light exposure. Which matches both the protoplanetary disk and the early Earth. This is just physical confirmation of what the blackboard nerds have been expecting for decades.

LarsDu882• 1 year ago

There's a big gap between speculating on a blackboard and hard physical proof

For instance, that there would be 33 amino acids in that sample.

For all we know, those amino acids could've all been left handed like the ones in our bodies.

This hard confirmation of equal fractions of left and right handed amino acids rules out several hypothesis of why our amino acids are all left handed

Asteroid Bennu samples have 14/20 amino acids found in life on Earth

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