But how many building blocks of life have we found in space so far?
We’ve found many on sample-return missions. The asteroid Bennu, brought back to Earth in 2023, contained all five nucleobases of DNA and RNA, along with 14 of the 20 amino acids used by living organisms. Its sibling asteroid Ryugu also yielded all five nucleobases, including uracil, which is found in RNA.
Astronomers categorize the molecules they find by complexity, starting with a broad group called "complex organic molecules" (COM). These are carbon-containing molecules with six or more atoms. Of the 350 molecules of any kind discovered in space so far, "about 180 of them qualify as COMs," Sergio Ioppolo, an astrochemist and an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Aarhus University in Denmark, told Live Science. "That cutoff is an operational convention rather than a fundamental definition of complexity."
Sign up for our newsletter(Image credit: Marilyn Perkins / Future)Not all COMs are building blocks of life, but some of them are. A subgroup within COMs is a "prebiotic" molecule that scientists think may have played some role in the origin of life. A prebiotic molecule "has no structural rule," Ioppolo said — different scientists define it slightly differently.
Using that definition, Ioppolo estimates "roughly 30 detected prebiotic candidates, although the exact number depends on where the line is drawn."
A Hubble image of the Milky Way’s center, in the constellation Sagittarius. Researchers have discovered a sugar found in raspberries buried in a cloud in this region. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Brammer)
However, there's a limit to the size and complexity of molecules that astronomical surveys can detect. To identify each molecule, scientists analyze the light from molecular clouds, which can reveal which parts of the electromagnetic spectrum have been absorbed. Those "spectral lines" act as a fingerprint for each molecule.
That limit means that even with the large numbers of prebiotic molecules we've already found in space, there are probably a lot more out there. But if the building blocks of life keep turning up everywhere we look, does that make it less impressive when we find them in places like Mars?
A mosaic image of the asteroid Bennu, which was found to contain all five nucleobases of DNA and RNA and 14 of the 20 amino acids found on Earth. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)
Which molecules are we still looking for?
There's also a bigger question: Does the abundance of these ingredients in space mean that life itself is common in the universe?
However, she's excited by the possibility that molecules of even greater complexity can form in the punishing environment of space. "Under the very extreme conditions of interstellar space with very low temperatures, close to absolute zero, and very low pressures, basically vacuum pressures, you can find these key ingredients for life," she said.
Related mysteries"This encourages us to continue looking for more of these molecules — for larger sugars, for instance, like ribose, [which] is part of RNA," she said. "If we can find ribose, that will mean that all of these key ingredients for life can form even before the stars and planets are born."
"The fact that [prebiotic molecules] are everywhere in star-forming regions means that there is a very high chance that if the conditions are right, you could potentially start the process of formation of life in other places," Ioppolo said. "We do know that all the ingredients are out there, but so far we only know that we are out here. We don't know if it worked out for someone else as well."
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