A new building block of life has been found in interstellar space
A new building block of life has been
found in interstellar space
Posted by:
Tarun Kumar
Astronomers have discovered an unusually
complex organic molecule in a giant gas cloud 27,000 light years away.
Some
astrobiologists argue that life was seeded from outer space through the impact
of asteroids, but a new study has shown that life may have interstellar space
to thank for its existence too.
Interstellar
space is the physical space within a galaxy not occupied by stars or planets.
In a paper
published in the journal Science on September 26, astronomers reported
discovering a complex molecule needed for life in the gaseous star-forming
region Sagittarius B2.
The finding
suggests that the building blocks of life may have their origins in
interstellar space.
Using the
Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, astronomers from Cornell in the
US and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and the University of
Cologne in Germany picked up radio waves emitted by the molecule isopropyl
cyanide.
The organic
molecules normally detected in these regions of space have straight chains with
a “backbone” of carbon atoms. Isopropyl cyanide is the first organic molecule
with branches to be found.
It is a
common element in organic molecules such as amino acids, which make up
proteins.
The
detection supports the idea that the organic molecules that have been found on
meteorites were first created during the process of star formation.