Asteroid Bennu reveals a new pathway to life’s chemistry

When NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission returned material from asteroid Bennu in 2023, scientists confirmed that the 4.6 billion year old rocks contained amino acids, the essential molecules that make life possible. Amino acids are responsible for building proteins and peptides in DNA, and they are central to nearly every biological process. What remained unclear was how these molecules formed in space in the first place.

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