Image courtesy of Shutterstock/nobeastsofierce
Joel Kontinen
How
many building blocks of life have we found in space so far?
First, it's
important to define what we mean by the building blocks of life. Scientists are
looking for molecules that look like those found in life on Earth, including
proteins; RNA; and lipids, the fatty molecules that make up
cell membranes.
The
building block of life cannot form life as such, Much more is needed. They have
to be put together with intelligent design.
The asteroid Bennu, brought back to Earth in
2023, contained all five nucleobases of DNA and RNA, along with 14 of the 20 amino
acids used by living organisms. Its sibling asteroid Ryugu also
yielded all five nucleobases, including uracil, which is found in RNA.
Astronomers
categorize the molecules ca they find by complexity, starting with a broad
group called "complex organic molecules" (COM). These are
carbon-containing molecules with six or more atoms. Of the 350 molecules of any kind discovered
in space so far, "about 180 of them qualify as COMs," Sergio Ioppolo, an astrochemist and an associate
professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Aarhus University in
Denmark, said. "That cutoff is an operational convention rather than a
fundamental definition of complexity."
Some of the
richest hunting grounds for these molecules are in molecular
clouds —
interstellar regions of gas and dust that are dense enough for molecules to
form. Using radio astronomy, Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, an astrochemist and staff
researcher at the Center for Astrobiology in Spain, and her team have
detected more than a dozen prebiotic
molecules in
molecular clouds at the center of the Milky Way, including the
four-carbon sugar erythrulose
They have
also found a true sugar in space.
Source:
Ashley Hamer Pritchard Edited by Laura Geggel, Laura Mondragón 2026
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