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What did this California lakebed

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and this rock on an asteroid

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have in common?

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Although they're located

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on radically different worlds,

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they both contain minerals

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that formed in environments

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that may have assembled

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the building blocks of life.

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For over a year, scientists

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have been studying the material gathered

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by the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission

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from the asteroid Bennu,

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and one of the many things they found

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are tiny crystals

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of a mineral called trona.

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Trona is a mineral known as an evaporite,

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meaning it is deposited

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when a briny lake evaporates,

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leaving behind all kinds of salts.

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Just like in the salt beds of

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Searles Lake, California.

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Finding trona and other evaporites

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tell scientists

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that the Bennu samples

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once held pockets of salty

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room-temperature water.

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And that is just the kind of environment

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perfect for forming organic molecules,

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the building blocks of life.

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Scientists found organic molecules

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in the Bennu samples,

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including compounds

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that are important to building life.

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These findings and others

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gathered from the asteroid samples

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suggest that Bennu is a fragment of a

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once wet world,

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likely including material

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from beyond Saturn's orbit

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that existed about 4.5 billion years ago.

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Finding these ingredients

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supports the theory

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that asteroids like Bennu

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dispersed water and the

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chemical building blocks of life

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throughout our solar system

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and beyond.