How can the latest technology, such as solar cells, be improved? An international research team led by the University of Göttingen is helping to find answers to questions like this with a new technique. For the first time, the formation of tiny, difficult-to-detect particles – known as dark excitons – can be tracked precisely in time and space. These invisible carriers of energy will play a key role in future solar cells, LEDs and detectors. The results were published in Nature Photonics.

With the OSIRIS-REx space probe, the NASA space agency succeeded in collecting some material from the surface of asteroid Bennu, which arrived on Earth in a small capsule in 2023. The analysis of the material by more than 40 scientific teams worldwide – including the team led by Prof. Frank Brenker from Goethe University – revealed a number of organic substances that form the basis for biomolecules. In addition, the minerals in the sample also indicate that the protoplanet from which Bennu originated once had liquid, salty water. Thus, this protoplanet possessed both ingredients for life and potential habitats.

Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life, as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as the “broth” for these compounds to interact and combine.

A new analysis of samples from the asteroid Bennu, NASA’s first asteroid sample captured in space and delivered to Earth, reveals that evaporated water left a briny broth where salts and minerals allowed the elemental ingredients of life to intermingle and create more complex structures. The discovery suggests that extraterrestrial brines provided a crucial setting for the development of organic compounds.

Japanese collaborators detected all five nucleobases — building blocks of DNA and RNA — in samples returned from asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission.