New scientific discovery supports the hypothesis that the foundations of life on Earth could have come from space

Three-dimensional model of Bennu. Photo: NASA / Wikimedia Commons

This sensational discovery makes the hypothesis increasingly plausible that the "building blocks" of life did not simply arise in space, but were delivered to the young Earth by asteroids.

Moreover, the ingredients for RNA, and possibly RNA itself, could have formed even before reaching our planet, writes Physics World.

In two new scientific articles in Nature Geoscience and Nature Astronomy, researchers describe exactly what was found in 120 grams of cosmic rock. In addition to sugars, a strange substance was discovered there, which scientists have already christened "space chewing gum".

Threat to Earth

Rotation of the asteroid Bennu, captured by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it approached Bennu, using the PolyCam long-range camera. Photo: NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona

Asteroid (101955) Bennu is a small cosmic body with a diameter of about 500 meters, belonging to the group of near-Earth asteroids. It was discovered in 1999 and named after the ancient Egyptian mythical bird Bennu, a symbol of Osiris' rebirth—a name proposed by a 9-year-old schoolchild from the USA.

Bennu is considered one of the most potentially dangerous objects for Earth. According to scientists' calculations, there is a small probability of its collision with our planet between 2169 and 2199 (the most probable date is September 24, 2182).

That's why it became the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission, which set off for the asteroid in 2016 to not only collect soil samples but also to refine its orbit. In September 2023, the capsule with its valuable cargo successfully returned to Earth, initiating a series of scientific discoveries.

Mysterious "Space Chewing Gum"

This discovery came as a real surprise. The carbonaceous substance, resembling a tangle of polymer chains, behaves like plasticine or chewing gum: when pressed, it bends and deforms.

"The material we see in our samples is a certain molecular chaos," says Scott Sandford from NASA's Research Center. "It's carbonaceous, but much richer in nitrogen and, to a lesser extent, oxygen, than most organic compounds found in extraterrestrial materials."

Scientists identified ribose (used in RNA) and – for the first time in any extraterrestrial sample (from asteroid Bennu) – glucose, a major energy source for life
​A microscopic particle of asteroid Bennu, brought to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, is manipulated under a… pic.twitter.com/zhbkIu05Vw

— Black Hole (@konstructivizm) December 11, 2025

A microscopic particle from asteroid Bennu is manipulated under a transmission electron microscope. To move a 30 µm fragment for further analysis, researchers reinforced it with thin platinum strips (L-shaped form on the surface). Photo: NASA/University of California, Berkeley

Studying this "gum" was not easy. The dust particles that held it (given "tasty" names "Lasagna" and "Neapolitan" due to their layered structure) turned out to be so fragile that they began to fall apart when attempts were made to lift them. Scientists literally had to invent microscopic platinum structures on the fly to strengthen the samples and slice them for analysis.

Why is this important for solving the origin of life?

Analysis of the "gum" showed the presence of nitrogenous compounds, which are part of DNA and RNA. And the discovery of ribose—a key sugar that is part of the RNA backbone—was the last piece of the puzzle. Scientists now know: everything necessary for assembling RNA molecules is present on asteroid Bennu.

An interesting detail: ribose was found in the samples, but deoxyribose (a component of DNA) was not. This, according to scientists, supports the popular "RNA World" theory. It states that life on Earth initially used RNA for information transfer, and only later did evolution transition to more stable DNA.

"The current results mean that RNA components were delivered from space to Earth," summarizes Yoshihiro Furukawa, head of the Japanese research group.

Thanks to missions to asteroids Bennu and Ryugu, a sample from which was returned by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Hayabusa2 mission, scientists are increasingly confident that the building blocks of life on Earth came from space.

Dust of Ancient Stars

Another discovery concerns "presolar grains"—dust older than our Solar System. Samples from Bennu contained six times more dust from supernova explosions than is usually found in meteorites. This provides new clues about what the cloud of gas and dust that later became our home—the Solar System—was formed from.

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