Rare Soft Remnant of Rainbow Meteorite From Early Solar System Found in Costa Rica May Hold Building Blocks of Life

In 2019 a space rock landed in Costa Rica, and according to researchers, could have been carrying what they believe to be 'building blocks of life.' The fireball broke into multiple parts on its way to Earth, with the shards spreading across La Palmera and Aguas Zarcas, Live Science reported.

The meteorites were collectively named Aguas Zarcas. On analysis, it was uncovered that the asteroid that birthed the meteorites was a remnant of the early Solar System. Researchers further discovered that the space rock contained carbon compounds that reportedly were responsible for life on Earth. 

Aguas Zarcas is rainbow-colored and analyzed to be 4,560 million years old, Daily Mail reported. It weighed around 2.4 pounds and a shard from it fell inside a home in Aguas Zarcas.

Authorities were informed who brought on board experts who examined the rock on the site itself with the help of tools from the Petrography and Geochemistry Section of the School of Geology. After a year the meteorite was identified as a carbonaceous chondrite, which came into being before the sun developed.

Carbonaceous chondrites contain organic molecules as complex as amino acids, which are known to be building blocks of proteins. The space rock was compared to another collection of meteorites that exploded over Murchison, Australia in 1969. Both contained the dust found in the early Milky Way and carried amino acids.

The collection of amino acids was more extensive in the Murchison meteorite. Some of the amino acids were identical to those found in many of the living beings on Earth. The Murchison meteorite also carried nucleobases, the building blocks of genetic molecules like RNA.

"We're not detecting life itself, but the components are all there," Daniel Glavin, an astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said. Aguas Zarcas contains the same compounds that Murchison meteorites carried. 

Researchers are looking forward to analyzing the 2019 meteorite with the help of new technologies. Experts were ecstatic to get their hands on possibly unadulterated spacefaring carbon compounds in the form of Aguas Zarcas. Throughout the process, researchers prioritized not getting the space rock contaminated so that they could get accurate data. The examination will help them understand the state of Earth in yet inaccessible times.

The team's objective is to find out if Aguas Zarcas has any trace of complex organic compounds, specifically proteins, that could have evaporated from Murchison during its time of discovery, Live Science reported. In 2020, Aguas Zarcas was the only extraterrestrial substance in human hands that contained carbon compounds. Since then many more such asteroid samples have arrived on the planet.