This paper is about clays, brines, and evaporites, not organic building blocks.

Still super cool, regardless! Tells us a lot about how Bennu dried out, how quickly, and what the asteroid was like when it was still “wet”. The asbestos content implies that hot rock and water were in contact for a significant time period to undergo such hydrothermal metamorphosis.

From NASA’s press release:

Analysis of the Bennu sample unveiled intriguing insights into the asteroid’s composition. Dominated by clay minerals, particularly serpentine, the sample mirrors the type of rock found at mid-ocean ridges on Earth, where material from the mantle, the layer beneath Earth’s crust, encounters water.

This interaction doesn’t just result in clay formation; it also gives rise to a variety of minerals like carbonates, iron oxides, and iron sulfides. But the most unexpected discovery is the presence of water-soluble phosphates. These compounds are components of biochemistry for all known life on Earth today.

This is the companion paper about reduced organic species found in the sample. All five nucleobases (DNA and RNA), 33 amino acids which are found in earth-life proteins and 19 amino acids which are not, aromatic and aliphatic structures, free nitrogen and sulfides, phosphates, basically everything you need for a good primordial soup.

It’s like primordial soup bouillon protected from space weathering by the insulating power of asbestos. Salt and organics and protein: just add water. You posted the article about the clays and salts, which is cool and an important component, but the organics and proteins are the organic building blocks. The clays and salts paper also had the surprise necessary inorganic building block of phosphates which we weren’t expecting and which completes the ingredients list for our bouillon.

Thank you!