A fragment of a meteorite that pierced the roof of a house in Hillsborough, in the US state of New Jersey, on July 16, 2024, has become one of the most important findings in recent years for science. A study published in the journal Science Advances concludes that the rock contains amino acids, carbon, and other prebiotic molecules; all are chemical compounds considered essential for the emergence of life.

Adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil are the five basic organic building blocks of life on Earth. They are considered the bricks of the genetic code, because the order in which they appear within DNA and RNA determines how genetic information is created, stored, and transmitted, and therefore how any living organism, including humans, functions. But their origin remains a mystery. One of the major scientific hypotheses is that these basic building blocks arrived on the early blue planet aboard carbon-rich meteorites from space. In 2023, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology analyzed samples of dust and gas brought back from an asteroid, presumably formed shortly after the creation of the solar system, called Ryugu. Initially They found uracilThis suggested that the bases of human RNA could be of extraterrestrial origin. Now the same team has published a study in Nature Astronomy In which they argue that this theory is strengthened, since they have now found the five nucleobases (the name given to these basic molecules).

Astronomers recently discovered a 60-meter-diameter asteroid that will cross Earth's orbit on December 22, 2032. It's been dubbed 2024 YR4, and while NASA calls it a "potentially hazardous object," it also says the probability of impact is 3.1%, but now it's only 0.005%.