Asteroids may have brought water and organic matter to Earth

Asteroids that traveled from the fringes of the solar system more than 4.5 billion kilometers away may have brought water and organic matter to the primordial Earth, a team of Japanese researchers have said.

The hypothesis, published Monday in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and others, was drawn from an analysis of samples from the Ryugu asteroid collected by the Hayabusa2 space probe.