The organic molecules that were the building blocks for life on Earth could have formed in the dusty disk that surrounded our sun before the solar system had planets, a new computer model shows.

The nitrogen in the gum was found to be in nitrogen heterocycles, which are the building blocks of nucleobases in DNA and RNA. This brings us to the other new discovery, reported in Nature Geoscience, ...

Scientists have discovered the building blocks of life in samples retrieved from a distant asteroid. In January 2025, scientists announced the discovery of organic molecules— the building blocks of ...

After traveling two billion miles over more than two years, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu, collected ...

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Sending a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid, gathering dust and rock from its surface, and returning the rare cache to our planet has been one of NASA’s boldest feats yet. And now, the daring OSIRIS ...

CINCINNATI (WKRC) - A recent discovery indicates that the chemical building blocks necessary for life to form on Earth were actually "extraterrestrial in origin," according to scientists. A pair of ...

Asteroid samples fetched by NASA hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world, scientists reported Wednesday. The findings provide the ...

There’s certainly nothing living on the asteroid Bennu, an airless, 1,614-ft. rubble pile orbiting the sun about 40.2 million miles from Earth. But that doesn’t mean that Bennu hasn’t all at once ...

(CNN) — Researchers have detected organic compounds and minerals necessary for life in unprecedented samples collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, adding evidence to the idea that asteroids ...