This mineral-rich asteroid might have carried the seeds of life. Planetary scientists have discovered organic matter essential to life in dust and rock retrieved from an asteroid known as Bennu. The finding supports the theory that near-Earth asteroids,

The building blocks for organic matter have been discovered on the asteroid Bennu, as deatiled in a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy. The research gives new insight into how life originated on Earth and where we might find it elsewhere in the universe.

Pristine samples from asteroid Bennu contain “basic building blocks” for life, offering new insights. The samples suggest Bennu’s parent asteroid had liquid water, leaving a “briny broth” of salts.