Overview
- Three studies in Nature journals report ribose and, for the first time in an extraterrestrial sample, glucose in pristine Bennu material.
- The sugars join previously detected nucleobases, amino acids and phosphates, meaning the complete chemical toolkit to assemble RNA is present.
- Researchers identified a previously unknown flexible, gum-like polymeric organic that likely formed via carbamate chemistry as Bennu’s progenitor warmed.
- Bennu holds about six times more presolar dust than any other studied astromaterial, indicating formation in a region enriched by supernova debris.
- The findings do not constitute evidence of life, and ongoing multinational lab work is probing the polymer’s structure, formation pathways and distribution across the samples.