A Sweet Discovery: Sugars Found in Murchison

December 20, 2001

	Dr. George Cooper in 1948

NASA scientist Dr. George Cooper and co-workers from the NASA Ames Research Center discovered sugar and several related organic compounds in the Murchison meteorite. This discovery provided the first evidence that another fundamental building block of life might have come from outer space. Previously, researchers had looked inside meteorites and found other organic, carbon-based compounds that play major roles in life on Earth, but no sugars.