A popular science TikToker explained discoveries on the asteroid Bennu after NASA brought samples back to Earth from 39 million miles away - finding 'building blocks' essential for life
19:21, 06 Dec 2025
An asteroid hurtling towards Earth is teeming with the 'building blocks of life', scientists say - potentially changing our understanding of the universe.
Scientists found evidence of what is believed to ancient water alongside a mysterious 'space gum' substance never before seen on an asteroid. The groundbreaking findings came from a chunk of the asteroid Bennu, which was successfully retrieved by a spacecraft 63 million kilometres (39 million miles) away and safely returned to Earth.
Space communications expert Alexandra Doten took to TikTok to share the "huge news", explaining that the sample potentially offers fresh insights into the origins of life.
Researchers at Tohoku University in Japan identified sugars vital for life within the rock - the first time such a discovery has been made in an extraterrestrial sample - while NASA scientists were baffled by a flexible, gum-like material found nowhere else in the known solar system. Alexandra shared the team's astonishing findings, and said: "They found some truly insane things.
"We already knew from this sample that the asteroid has high carbon content and water together - and together those indicate the building blocks for life as we know it." She further explained that Bennu is covered in nitrogen and organic compounds, along with the mineral serpentine, which bears a striking resemblance to a rock found in mid-ocean ridges on Earth, underwater.
"Scientists think this asteroid is a chunk of an ancient water world that has been travelling through space for billions of years", Alexandra said. She then delved into the scientific details of Bennu's composition and its comparison to Earth.
"On Earth, life uses 20 amino acids to create proteins - and they found 14 of them on this asteroid," she said. All five nucleotide bases that makeup DNA and RNA were discovered on Bennu, and this week scientists found what she described as "sugars essential for biology - specifically ribose and glucose."
Ribose is a component of RNA's full name - Ribonucleic acid - which, according to Alexandra, indicates that all necessary components to form RNA are present in Bennu. "This has huge implications - it could imply that RNA is more prevalent in the universe and could be the dominant form of early life," she said.
'Space gum' found on same asteroid
A separate paper published in the journal Natural Astronomy, led by Scott Sandford at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley and Zack Gainsforth of the University of California, detailed how a gum-like substance was had been found on the asteroid. NASA described the substance as "a pliable material, similar to used gum or even a soft plastic", adding that exposure to radiation "made it brittle, like a lawn chair left too many seasons in the sun."
Alexandra also highlighted a third study from the same journal led by Ann Nguyen from NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, adding: "Finally, the scientists found an unexpectedly high amount of dust, produced by supernova explosions that predate our solar system."