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Inside the Bennu fragment called OREX-800066-3, certain boundaries appear at an almost unimaginably small scale, where neighboring patches hold very different chemistry.<\/p>\n
The samples were analyzed by Professor Mehmet Yesiltas and colleagues at Stony Brook University<\/a>.<\/p>\n The team matched the split pattern to water that had altered some areas and left others largely untouched.<\/p>\n Instead of blending into one chemically mixed material, the sample preserved distinct pockets that record different stages of Bennu\u2019s history.<\/p>\n That sharp separation renders this finding significant and shows why the rest of Bennu\u2019s chemistry needs to be read zone by zone.<\/p>\n A pristine clue from space<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx mission<\/a> returned material from the asteroid Bennu to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, giving scientists direct access to its original chemistry.<\/p>\n Unlike meteorites, the OSIRIS-REx sample did not need to survive a fiery atmospheric plunge before scientists could open it.<\/p>\n As a result, Earth\u2019s air and moisture had fewer chances to rewrite chemistry once the grain was accessible to scientists.<\/p>\n With so few pristine asteroid samples on hand, every hidden pattern in this grain becomes harder to dismiss.<\/p>\n Chemistry divided into distinct regions<\/p>\n Across that fragment, researchers found three recurring zones instead of one that blended a mixture of rock and carbon-based material<\/a>.<\/p>\n One part of the sample held simple carbon chains, while another was packed with mineral material that had formed in the presence of water.<\/p>\n A third area preserved a different kind of carbon-rich material that tends to break down when water exposure lasts too long.<\/p>\n Because these areas barely overlapped, the sample captured separate moments in its history instead of one fully mixed process.<\/p>\n Tracing pathways of ancient fluid<\/p>\n A clearer signal came from sulfur-linked material that showed up almost entirely in the mineral-rich areas.<\/p>\n In those spots, water had once moved through and left behind dissolved material as it settled.<\/p>\n In contrast, other areas kept their original chemistry<\/a> because the water either missed them or passed through too lightly to cause any change.<\/p>\n From that route, one grain can preserve both mineral growth and fragile chemistry, as seen side by side.<\/p>\n Protecting prebiotic chemistry<\/p>\n Survival may be the most striking part of the result, because fragile nitrogen-rich chemistry often disappears during long contact with liquid water.<\/p>\n \u201cThese findings carry broader significance for planetary science and astrobiology,\u201d said Yesiltas.<\/p>\n Keeping that chemistry intact matters because small bodies may have transported ingredients for other purposes without erasing them first.<\/p>\n A record etched in salt<\/p>\n Earlier Bennu studies<\/a> had uncovered salts left by an ancient brine, salty water loaded with dissolved material.<\/p>\n Evaporation had already been shown, but the new map explains why some microscopic neighborhoods had different chemistry than the others.<\/p>\n Salt deposits fit a larger earlier asteroid that held liquid only in certain places and at certain times.<\/p>\n Seen together, the results suggest Bennu formed from material shaped in several watery environments instead of one simple, body-wide episode.<\/p>\n Hidden structure within a single grain<\/p>\n At about eight ten-millionths of an inch, or 20 nanometers, the sample stopped looking chemically average and started showing borders.<\/p>\n Broader scans can smooth out those borders, hiding the kind of local history that decides what survives and what forms.<\/p>\n Reading the grain point by point kept neighboring signals from blurring into one chemical average.<\/p>\n At that detail, one tiny OSIRIS-REx sample particle becomes a map of where water acted, and where it failed.<\/p>\n Asteroids altered by water<\/p>\n Japanese samples from asteroid Ryugu had already shown widespread water alteration, but Bennu now looks less chemically even at the smallest scales.<\/p>\n A Ryugu study<\/a> linked its diverse organics to variable water processing, setting up a useful comparison.<\/p>\n Bennu shares that history of water and carbon-rich material, yet this grain keeps sharper boundaries between altered and protected zones.<\/p>\n Those differences could reflect how each larger source asteroid handled fluid movement, temperature, and breakup before the modern asteroids formed.<\/p>\n Carriers of prebiotic ingredients<\/p>\n What Bennu offers is not a story about life itself, but a record of chemistry that may have reached early Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n Carbon-rich asteroids likely delivered water and reactive molecules across the young solar system, and samples allowed scientists to test that idea directly.<\/p>\n \u201cBy extension, it may reveal how organics relevant to prebiotic chemistry may have been delivered to early Earth via carbonaceous asteroids and may have played a role in the chemical processes that might have eventually led to life,\u201d said Yesiltas.<\/p>\n Even so, the sample cannot say whether those ingredients ever assembled into biology, and the researchers did not claim that.<\/p>\n A fuller map of asteroid water history<\/p>\n Bennu now reads as a body where water, minerals, and fragile carbon chemistry shared space without being mixed beyond recognition.<\/p>\n Further work on other grains, and comparisons with Ryugu, should show whether hidden channels were common or unusually well preserved.<\/p>\n The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read?\u00a0Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a>\u00a0for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on\u00a0EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by\u00a0Eric Ralls<\/a>\u00a0and Earth.com.<\/p>\n Image Credit: NASA<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new analysis has revealed that water once moved through a small asteroid called Bennu in narrow channels,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-386402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}