A team of researchers led by Spanish scientists has published their discovery of the complex molecule naphthalene in an interstellar star-forming cloud, indicating many prebiotic organic molecules necessary for life as we know it could have been present when our own solar system formed.
According to the new research -- published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters -- the naphthalene molecules were discovered 700 light-years from Earth in a star-forming region of the constellation Perseus, in the direction of the star Cernis 52.
When napthalene is mixed with water and ammonium -- both also common in the interstellar medium -- and subjected to ultraviolet light, these molecules react to form a variety of compounds essential to the development of life as we know it on Earth, including amino acids and several precursor molecules to vitamins.
3 comments:
yay! um, er, i don't know what else to say. ingredients for life found outside our galaxy... i think that is great news. since i'm a big fan of life (where applicable) -- now then, ahem, let's hope that that there life is smarter than this here life! we are very nearly drowning in dumblife up here!
Maybe aliens are just trying to get rid of moths.
Not to be pedantic, but this is well inside our galaxy, not outside it....
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