NASA Found Sugar in Meteorites That Crashed on Earth

In a new research, NASA has found Meteorites that have crashed into the surface of Earth billions of years back, contain sugar, thereby endorsing the idea that asteroids may also hold some ingredients to life.

The team of international scientists under NASA has found the bio-essential sugars in the meteorites, which also contain other biological compounds, according to a press release recently released by NASA.

Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the sun and are the parent bodies of most meteorites. One theory thus suggests that chemical reactions within asteroids can create some of the elements, which are essential to life.

In a study recently published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have analyzed three meteorites, including one that has landed in Australia in the year 1969 and another one that dates back billions of years. 

The researchers used different extraction methods using hydrochloric acid and water. Thereby finding sugars like arabinose and xylose but the most significant of the entire finding was ribose.

Ribose plays an important part in human biology. It exists in human RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecules and delivers messages from our DNA to help build proteins for our bodies.

Jason Dworkin of NASA and a co-author of the study said, “It is remarkable that a molecule as fragile as ribose could be detected in such ancient material.”

The discovery of ribose also, therefore, suggests that RNA evolved even before DNA, thereby giving scientists a clearer picture of how life may have formed on earth. 

Another lead author of the study, Yoshihiro Furukawa of Japan’s Tohoku University, said, “The research provides the first direct evidence of ribose in space and the delivery of the sugar to Earth. The extraterrestrial sugar might have contributed to the formation of RNA on the prebiotic Earth which possibly led to the origin of life.”

There is also a possibility that the meteorites had been contaminated by life on Earth after they land on the surface of the earth, but various tests on them clearly gave evidence that the sugars probably came from space.

Now, the researchers are trying to analyze the meteorites to see the abundance of these sugars. The evidence thus proved that meteorites might have led to terrestrial life. Last January, researchers have found two meteorites that held other ingredients for life like amino acids, hydrocarbons and other organic matter, with traces of liquid water.