Life in our outer space?

Just drifting in space, an object, a chunk of rock,  that was investigated is found to have building blocks of life.

Investigated by a Japanese probe in 2018, now returned to Earth, an asteroid, named Ryugu has shown indications in their samples towards life. Asteroids are found like a ring in our Solar System between Mars and Earth. The building blocks of life are thought to be fairly common around the early history of the Solar System. It is found that Ryugu contains carbonaceous chondrite which is valued for developing supporting chemical elements that can be used toward organic molecules. It is noted that the collected samples were in a tight seal to prevent any outside contamination.

 Released information is from Hokkaido University in March 2021 in the journal "Nature Communications". In the samples, the Japanese Space Agency has said after much examination and referencing that they have found at least one possibly unique new element for asteroid particle collections and call it "uracil". It is a nucleic acid of RNA. This may give a boost for those who postulate that RNA is efficient for building into living organisms by sharing out information, even in space where some speculate RNA occurs with viable compositions.

Plus the other finding is of Nicotinic acid, also known as Niacin which is said to be an

important cofactor for metabolism in living organisms.

The team found the amounts of uracil to range 6-32 parts per billion, and the niacin to be 49-99 parts per billion. The elements were collected from different parts of the asteroid to give diversity of sample sources.

There is further noted the presence in the sample of carboxylic acids which are found in proteins. The team leader,  Yasuhiro Oba,suggests then that such rich presence of these elements could have in the past plunged into Earth and seeding the planet with life combinations.

NASA of the U.S. is planning to send spacecraft to another asteroid in the near future with similar objectives for collection.