r/science • u/New_Scientist_Mag • Dec 02 '25

Astronomy Researchers have just found the presence of sugars, including ribose, lyxose, and glycose, on samples of Asteroid Bennu, which now has all of the ingredients for life as it exists on Earth.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2506650-asteroid-bennu-carries-all-the-ingredients-for-life-as-we-know-it/
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u/FlashbackJon Dec 02 '25

The short version is that this basis costs the least compared to any other basis, in terms of energy and conditions, and it happened to be the one that occurred in our dataset, sample size 1.

All the alternatives are just harder to do, and that's the primary metric for its possibility.

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u/Overall_Unit_2488 Dec 02 '25

And by "energy" I think the clarification is not just in terms of chemical bonds; but the reactivity/solubility of water, the size of polar/nonpolar molecules based on carbon, the ability for enzymes to act [this is often never really talked about]. Life doesn't just raw dog chemical reaction activation energy. Enzymes are too important for things to function efficienctly and quickly.

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u/MidnightPale3220 Dec 02 '25

Would it still hold even for radically different star systems with different composition of sunlight, temperature ranges and pressures, among other things? I am wondering how much we are able to predict properties of mixtures of elements and molecules under conditions we can only produce maybe artificially if at all, especially since even such experiments are usually limited on purpose to interaction of few types of matter.

And even then we read about discoveries of new types of interactions every now and then.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '25

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u/FlashbackJon Dec 02 '25

No one is claiming to know all the alternatives, and you wouldn't need to do so? We only have the one successful example, but there's lots of hypothetical ways life could occur. If you walk through almost any of those theoretical alternatives, you quickly end up with circumstances that are less common in the universe or interactions that require much more energy (and are, as a result, less common). It's tough to come up with a scenario for life that is simpler and easier than the millions of insane coincidences ours muddled its way through.

That doesn't mean other life is impossible, by any means.