this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
291 points (99.7% liked)

Space

2516 readers
90 users here now

A community to discuss space & astronomy through a STEM lens

Rules

  1. Be respectful and inclusive. This means no harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
  2. Engage in constructive discussions by discussing in good faith.
  3. Foster a continuous learning environment.

Also keep in mind, mander.xyz's rules on politics

Please keep politics to a minimum. When science is the focus, intersection with politics may be tolerated as long as the discussion is constructive and science remains the focus. As a general rule, political content posted directly to the instance’s local communities is discouraged and may be removed. You can of course engage in political discussions in non-local communities.

Related Communities

🔭 Science

🚀 Engineering

🌌 Art and Photography

Other Cool Links

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
ZafiraHUN@mander.xyz
otter@lemmy.ca
Bitswap@lemmy.world
otter@mander.xyz
291
Scientists Just Found All 5 Genetic “Letters” of DNA and RNA on an Asteroid (scitechdaily.com)
submitted 6 days ago by Delta_V@lemmy.world to c/space@mander.xyz
46 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The discovery of all five nucleobases on Ryugu strengthens the idea that life’s molecular ingredients formed in space before reaching Earth.

A new study reports that samples from the asteroid Ryugu contain all five fundamental nucleobases, the molecular “letters” of life.

Tiny asteroid grains can preserve chemical clues about the ingredients that may have helped life emerge on Earth. The Ryugu material was returned from space in 2020 by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 mission.

In 2023, an international research team reported finding uracil, one of the nucleobases, in the Ryugu samples. Now, a study published on March 16, 2026, in Nature Astronomy by Japanese scientists has confirmed that all five nucleobases are present in the pristine asteroid material.

The finding suggests that these life related ingredients may have been common across the young Solar System...

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] smoker@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 days ago

strengthens the idea that life’s molecular ingredients formed in space before reaching Earth

Yeah, I’m not buying this. All this is saying is that the building blocks of life are surprisingly easy to form, a lot easier than most people realize. The hard part comes afterwards, which is the reason it took like a billion years for single celled life to develop once the earth cooled down enough and another billion to perfect the replication chemistry.

It’s the same conclusion to draw when we found amino acids on asteroids a while back.