A compound called pyrene has been detected in a molecular cloud in the constellation Taurus.
ESO
A complex form of carbon important to life on Earth has been discovered for the first time outside the solar system. Its existence helps show how the compounds necessary for life came from space.
The most abundant form of carbon in the universe is the carbon found in carbon monoxide gas, but it is unclear how this transforms into the complex compounds (generally containing stronger chemical bonds) found in living things. is.
Astronomers have discovered asteroids containing compounds with stronger carbon bonds, such as Ryugu. It is thought that these space rocks may have brought the ingredients of life to Earth, but the original source of these carbon-based compounds is still poorly understood.
Now, Brett McGuire of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have searched for and detected a complex carbon-based molecule called pyrene in a star-forming region called the Taurus Molecular Cloud. At a distance of 430 light years, this cloud is one of the closest to Earth.
Researchers used the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia to search for Pyrene’s radio signals. Such molecules would become important intermediaries between carbon monoxide and complex carbon molecules in living organisms.
Pure pyrene is not so easy to detect clearly in radio waves, so McGuire and his colleagues instead looked for cyanopyrene, which has a cyanide molecule attached to pyrene, and similarly carefully produced and measured it in the laboratory. compared with the characteristics of cyanopyrene. In the Earth laboratory.
The clouds in which the researchers observed cyanopyrenes were extremely cold, about 10 degrees Celsius above absolute zero (-263 degrees Celsius), meaning these carbon compounds were present long before stars formed. McGuire says that means we are observing
“Right now we’re seeing both ends of this lifecycle,” he says. We’re looking at the chemical archaeological record of the solar system on asteroids and on Earth, McGuire said. We are seeing the beginning of the archaeological record. ”
Assuming that the radio signals that McGuire and his team observed from Taurus’ molecular cloud represent other places in the universe, cyanopyrenes are extremely abundant and likely the largest complex carbon chemistry in the universe. That suggests one type of storage, he says.
Finding these molecules and the environments in which they exist means chemists can begin to map out the precise chemical reactions and pathways that will eventually lead to the building blocks of life on Earth, such as nucleic acids. , says Martin McCaustra of Heriot-Watt University in the UK.
He says it’s not easy to explain how pyrene molecules form in the first place. “What else is there in that environment that leads us to (pyrene)? We now have a richer understanding of the complex chemistry coupled with these aromatic molecules. There is.”
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