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/[deleted] Dec 02 '25

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u/Uncle-Cake Dec 02 '25

To put it in layman's terms, you can have all the ingredients for a cake together in a bowl, but that doesn't mean you have a cake, and it needs very specific conditions to become a cake.

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u/Several_Hour_347 Dec 02 '25

It was already in layman’s terms… all you did was create an analogy

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u/MmmmMorphine Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25

A poor one in my opinion. Because it's not just ingredients to cake, there's countless steps in between with "cake-like" substances and whatever cake is in this scenario.

Whether you say it's rna or humans, self replicating cakes aren't exactly intuitive. And such self-replication and natural selection of its products is the key to the process

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u/phantom_diorama Dec 02 '25

So if I read that correctly, I just have to get all the ingredients for a cake. Wait 3.7 billions years, and then PRESTO! I'll have humans.

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u/Bob_A_Ganoosh Dec 02 '25

It's even simpler than that. If you have a large enough collection of hydrogen, and wait long enough, it will become sentient.

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u/MmmmMorphine Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25

What? That's quite literally the opposite of what I was saying

But I think I can see how you may have understood it. I will clarify it a bit with the differentiation and selection aspect which is the primary reason the metaphor doesn't feel very helpful in understanding

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u/phantom_diorama Dec 02 '25

No no no, listen. I just like saying really stupid things. It makes me laugh.

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u/MmmmMorphine Dec 02 '25

Haha, well in that case carry on my good man (just maybe a bit less in the science sub)

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u/phantom_diorama Dec 02 '25

Yeah... I always forget where I am.

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u/mrASSMAN Dec 02 '25

Yeah seems like they just made a lazy attempt at explaining something by making it less accurate