小行星本努拥有生命的基石
(原标题: Asteroid Bennu Holds the Building Blocks of Life)
2025-02-12
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一块太空岩石能告诉我们关于地球生命的什么信息？2020年10月，美国宇航局的OSIRIS-REx宇宙飞船小心翼翼地接近近地小行星101955 Bennu，以收集表面样本。2023年9月，机器人飞船将这些样本带回了地球。最近的一项分析显示，令人惊讶的是，这些样本包含了20种已知氨基酸中的14种，这些氨基酸是生命的基本组成部分。氨基酸的存在重新引出了一个大问题：生命是否起源于太空？然而，蛋白质构建块本身也有另一个惊喜——它们含有均匀的左旋和右旋氨基酸混合物，而我们的地球只有左旋氨基酸。这就提出了另一个大问题：为什么地球上的生命只有左旋氨基酸？这方面的研究肯定会继续。
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What can a space rock tell us about life on Earth? NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a careful approach to the near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu in October of 2020 to collect surface samples. In September 2023, the robotic spaceship returned these samples to Earth. A recent analysis has shown, surprisingly, that the samples contained 14 out of the 20 known amino acids that are the essential building blocks of life. The presence of the amino acids re-introduces a big question: Could life have originated in space? However, the protein building blocks themselves held another surprise -- they contained an even mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids -- in contrast to our Earth which only has left-handed ones. This raises another big question: Why does life on Earth have only left-handed amino acids? Research on this is sure to continue.