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NASA lab confirms DNA sugar can be made in space, adding evidence that ‘life’ could be all over the universe
NASA researchers at the Ames’ Astrophysics and Astrochemistry Lab in Mountain View, California have provided the first experimental evidence demonstrating that the sugar in DNA – 2-deoxyribose – can be formed in interstellar space. In their study published on December 18, 2018 in the journal Nature Communications, Michel Nuevo, George Cooper, and Scott Sandford combined organic compounds, water vapor, and light – all elements present in interstellar space – inside a vacuum chamber mimicking the cosmic environment and observed the results. Along with the DNA sugar, a variety of other sugar derivatives were found to have been created. This discovery is more evidence that the chemical building blocks of life could be common all over the universe, seeding other planets as they did Earth in the ancient past.
One of the biggest questions science is constantly pursuing is whether we are alone in the universe, a research endeavor that takes many paths. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan is famously quoted often, saying, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.” It meant that the universe is filled with the building blocks of life, thus the pursuit to find out how those building blocks combine to actually form life is an endeavor with the farthest reaching implications. Scott Sandford, one of the study’s researchers, added to this in reference to his own team’s experiment, saying, “The universe is an organic chemist. It has big beakers and lots of time – and the result is a lot of organic material, some of which is useful to life.”
To make their discovery, the Ames team cooled an aluminum substance to near absolute zero inside a vacuum chamber (since space is a vacuum), and added a mixture of water vapor and methanol gas before exposing it to ultraviolet light and heat, fully mimicking the interstellar environment. The space between stars is filled with dust and gases and is constantly subjected to light particles bombarding in from every radiation-emitting source around it. The experiment was designed to help answer the question of whether the space environment itself can make the compounds essential to life rather than just the single-elemental building blocks. Another team of researchers in France previously discovered the creation of ribose – the sugar in RNA, a possible precursor to DNA – in an experiment similar to the current study, setting the stage for the team’s further findings.
A growing number of organic compounds have been found on meteorites over the years including carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur. Despite the actively changing geography of Earth complicating the discovery of remnants from its very early days, scientists have been able to find and study things like carbonaceous chondrites, meteorites originating from asteroids as old as our solar system. This research has made it possible to analyze how planets have formed and evolved over billions of years. Combining this type of research along with other work demonstrating that meteorites in general contain the building blocks of life and travel throughout the galaxies of the universe, the expanding number of exoplanets being found could imply even more significant possibilities.
Exoplanets, i.e., planets that orbit stars other than our own, are being discovered on a regular basis as data from prior and current observatory and telescope missions is reviewed. Over the last 20 years since “planet hunting” really got started, over 3800 exoplanets have been confirmed with around 2900 more awaiting confirmation. By observing the amount of light a distant star dims over period of time, scientists can determine whether there is a planet orbiting it, its size, distance from its star, and the colors missing in the planets’ atmosphere light spectrum which tell what chemicals are present, such as oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and so forth. After analyzing all of these things, it can be predicted whether an exoplanet may be Earth-like and whether it’s in what’s called the “Goldilocks Zone”, or position where life as we know it might have the right conditions to evolve.
That may seem like a lot of conditions to meet, but it’s estimated that around 20-50 percent of the stars in our night sky may have small, rocky planets in their stars’ habitable zones. As more is learned about planet formation, that number may be revised up or down. Thus far, one planetary system has been studied extensively that has planets somewhat similar to Earth: TRAPPIST-1. It’s comprised of an ultra-cool dwarf star with 7 rocky worlds orbiting it, all of them potentially having water, some more than Earth. Considering the growing evidence that the seeds for life to evolve are prominently distributed and created throughout space with the number of potentially Earth-like planets being discovered, we may have some exciting news from the interstellar world in the near future.
Tesla engineers deflected calls from Apple on a daily basis while the tech giant was developing its now-defunct electric vehicle program, which was known as “Project Titan.”
Back in 2022 and 2023, Apple was developing an EV in a top-secret internal fashion, hoping to launch it by 2028 with a fully autonomous driving suite.
However, Apple bailed on the project in early 2024, as Project Titan abandoned the project in an email to over 2,000 employees. The company had backtracked its expectations for the vehicle on several occasions, initially hoping to launch it with no human driving controls and only with an autonomous driving suite.
Apple canceling its EV has drawn a wide array of reactions across tech
It then planned for a 2028 launch with “limited autonomous driving.” But it seemed to be a bit of a concession at that point; Apple was not prepared to take on industry giants like Tesla.
Wedbush’s Dan Ives noted in a communication to investors that, “The writing was on the wall for Apple with a much different EV landscape forming that would have made this an uphill battle. Most of these Project Titan engineers are now all focused on AI at Apple, which is the right move.”
Apple did all it could to develop a competitive EV that would attract car buyers, including attempting to poach top talent from Tesla.
In a new podcast interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it was revealed that Apple had been calling Tesla engineers nonstop during its development of the now-defunct project. Musk said the engineers “just unplugged their phones.”
Musk said in full:
“They were carpet bombing Tesla with recruiting calls. Engineers just unplugged their phones. Their opening offer without any interview would be double the compensation at Tesla.”
Interestingly, Apple had acquired some ex-Tesla employees for its project, like Senior Director of Engineering Dr. Michael Schwekutsch, who eventually left for Archer Aviation.
Tesla took no legal action against Apple for attempting to poach its employees, as it has with other companies. It came after EV rival Rivian in mid-2020, after stating an “alarming pattern” of poaching employees was noticed.
There are a lot of Tesla bulls out there who have astronomical expectations for the company, especially as its arm of reach has gone well past automotive and energy and entered artificial intelligence and robotics.
However, some of the most bullish Tesla investors believe the company could become worth $100 trillion, and CEO Elon Musk does not believe that number is completely out of the question, even if it sounds almost ridiculous.
To put that number into perspective, the top ten most valuable companies in the world — NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Saudi Aramco, Broadcom, and Tesla — are worth roughly $26 trillion.
Will Tesla join the fold? Predicting a triple merger with SpaceX and xAI
Cathie Wood of ARK Invest believes the number is reasonable considering Tesla’s long-reaching industry ambitions:
“…in the world of AI, what do you have to have to win? You have to have proprietary data, and think about all the proprietary data he has, different kinds of proprietary data. Tesla, the language of the road; Neuralink, multiomics data; nobody else has that data. X, nobody else has that data either. I could see $100 trillion. I think it’s going to happen because of convergence. I think Tesla is the leading candidate [for $100 trillion] for the reason I just said.”
Musk said late last year that all of his companies seem to be “heading toward convergence,” and it’s started to come to fruition. Tesla invested in xAI, as revealed in its Q4 Earnings Shareholder Deck, and SpaceX recently acquired xAI, marking the first step in the potential for a massive umbrella of companies under Musk’s watch.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
Now that it is happening, it seems Musk is even more enthusiastic about a massive valuation that would swell to nearly four-times the value of the top ten most valuable companies in the world currently, as he said on X, the idea of a $100 trillion valuation is “not impossible.”
It’s not impossible
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2026
Tesla is not just a car company. With its many projects, including the launch of Robotaxi, the progress of the Optimus robot, and its AI ambitions, it has the potential to continue gaining value at an accelerating rate.
Musk’s comments show his confidence in Tesla’s numerous projects, especially as some begin to mature and some head toward their initial stages.
Elon Musk
Celebrating SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Tesla Roadster launch, seven years later (Op-Ed)
Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
When Falcon Heavy lifted off in February 2018 with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as its payload, SpaceX was at a much different place. So was Tesla. It was unclear whether Falcon Heavy was feasible at all, and Tesla was in the depths of Model 3 production hell.
At the time, Tesla’s market capitalization hovered around $55–60 billion, an amount critics argued was already grossly overvalued. SpaceX, on the other hand, was an aggressive private launch provider known for taking risks that traditional aerospace companies avoided.
The Roadster launch was bold by design. Falcon Heavy’s maiden mission carried no paying payload, no government satellite, just a car drifting past Earth with David Bowie playing in the background. To many, it looked like a stunt. For Elon Musk and the SpaceX team, it was a bold statement: there should be some things in the world that simply inspire people.
Inspire it did, and seven years later, SpaceX and Tesla’s results speak for themselves.
Today, Tesla is the world’s most valuable automaker, with a market capitalization of roughly $1.54 trillion. The Model Y has become the best-selling car in the world by volume for three consecutive years, a scenario that would have sounded insane in 2018. Tesla has also pushed autonomy to a point where its vehicles can navigate complex real-world environments using vision alone.
And then there is Optimus. What began as a literal man in a suit has evolved into a humanoid robot program that Musk now describes as potential Von Neumann machines: systems capable of building civilizations beyond Earth. Whether that vision takes decades or less, one thing is evident: Tesla is no longer just a car company. It is positioning itself at the intersection of AI, robotics, and manufacturing.
SpaceX’s trajectory has been just as dramatic.
The Falcon 9 has become the undisputed workhorse of the global launch industry, having completed more than 600 missions to date. Of those, SpaceX has successfully landed a Falcon booster more than 560 times. The Falcon 9 flies more often than all other active launch vehicles combined, routinely lifting off multiple times per week.
Falcon 9 has ferried astronauts to and from the International Space Station via Crew Dragon, restored U.S. human spaceflight capability, and even stepped in to safely return NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams when circumstances demanded it.
Starlink, once a controversial idea, now dominates the satellite communications industry, providing broadband connectivity across the globe and reshaping how space-based networks are deployed. SpaceX itself, following its merger with xAI, is now valued at roughly $1.25 trillion and is widely expected to pursue what could become the largest IPO in history.
And then there is Starship, Elon Musk’s fully reusable launch system designed not just to reach orbit, but to make humans multiplanetary. In 2018, the idea was still aspirational. Today, it is under active development, flight-tested in public view, and central to NASA’s future lunar plans.
In hindsight, Falcon Heavy’s maiden flight with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster was never really about a car in space. It was a signal that SpaceX and Tesla were willing to think bigger, move faster, and accept risks others wouldn’t.
The Roadster is still out there, orbiting the Sun. Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
Tesla engineers deflected calls from this tech giant’s now-defunct EV project
Tesla to a $100T market cap? Elon Musk’s response may shock you
