Japan's Hayabusa2 mission finds all 5 nucleobases on Ryugu
Technology
Japan's Hayabusa2 mission just made a big discovery: all five DNA and RNA building blocks, adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil, were found on asteroid Ryugu.
This suggests the basic ingredients for life might be scattered across our solar system, not just on Earth.
Ryugu dust shows nucleobases plus ammonia
The team studied tiny dust samples collected from Ryugu in 2019 and brought back to Earth.
They found a unique mix of these molecules and even detected ammonia.
While it doesn't prove life started in space, it gives us fresh clues about how life's ingredients can form naturally out there.