Talk about a sugar rush! <\/p>\n
NASA may have just come a little closer to cracking one of science\u2019s most enduring mysteries<\/a> \u2014\u00a0how life on Earth got started.\u00a0<\/p>\n The space agency has reportedly discovered<\/a> life-giving essential sugars on the asteroid Bennu, a 500-meter-wide rock hurtling through space, some 200 million miles from our planet.<\/p>\n NASA cracked open asteroid Bennu and found sugars and a wad of \u201cspace gum\u201d older than Earth\u2019s first amoeba. Turns out the universe has been chewing on the ingredients for life all along. NASA \/ SWNS<\/p>\n Scientists found ribose \u2014 a five-carbon sugar crucial for RNA \u2014 and glucose, the six-carbon energy booster that fuels the human existence. <\/p>\n This is the first time ribose has been confirmed in a sample collected directly from an asteroid \u2014\u00a0though it\u2019s been spotted in a few meteorites before.\u00a0<\/p>\n Don\u2019t panic \u2014 no aliens here. Instead, experts say these sugars are a key ingredient to the origin of life <\/a>billions of years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cAll five nucleobases used to construct both DNA and RNA, along with phosphates, have already been found in the Bennu samples brought to Earth by OSIRIS-REx,\u201d said study leader Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Japan.<\/p>\n \u201cThe new discovery of ribose means that all of the components to form the molecule RNA are present in Bennu.\u201d<\/p>\n Furukawa said today\u2019s life depends on the three-way teamwork of DNA, RNA and proteins \u2014 but the earliest life on Earth probably kept things simpler.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rock candy? The sugary scientific treat awaiting researchers on Bennu is a sweet find that could help explain Earth\u2019s origins. AP<\/p>\n RNA, he said, is something of an early Swiss Army knife, able to hold genetic code and jump-start key reactions without any help.<\/p>\n Scientists say Bennu\u2019s samples are hiding a bizarre bonus: a never-before-seen \u201cspace gum\u201d that may have helped kickstart life on Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n The goo \u2014 once squishy, now stiff \u2014 is packed with nitrogen- and oxygen-rich polymers that likely formed as Bennu\u2019s ancient parent rock heated up in the early solar system.\u00a0<\/p>\n Researchers think this cosmic chewing gum was built from carbamate, a compound that managed to link itself into complex chains before the asteroid got warm and watery enough to wash it away.\u00a0<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s latest asteroid loot includes life-linked sugars and a gummy mystery material straight out of the solar system\u2019s toddler years. Apparently, even the cosmos had a messy phase. NASA\/Kimberly Allums \/ SWNS<\/p>\n In other words: Bennu\u2019s been carrying around the universe\u2019s oldest stick of gum<\/a>, and it might just be holding some serious scientific clues.<\/p>\n Scott Sandford of NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center in California\u2019s Silicon Valley who led another relevant study<\/a> said that the strange, gummy material may be Bennu\u2019s oldest chemical makeover, a relic from the solar system\u2019s wild youth.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re looking at, quite possibly, one of the earliest alterations of materials that occurred in this rock,\u201d the astrophysicist said \u2014 adding that \u201cwe\u2019re looking at events near the beginning of the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n