Life-forming Cyanide Molecules Discovered Swirling Juvenile Star
Scientists hunting for life in the universe have found its building blocks around a distant star.
Researchers reported in the journal Nature, finding methyl cyanide in a gas-filled disk around a star called MWC 480, a million year-old star relatively young compared to the sun. However star is twice as big as the sun and shines 10 times brighter. It lies 455 light years away in the constellation Tarus. Researchers said that the amount of cyanide discovered could fill earth's oceans.
"Studies of comets and asteroids show that the solar nebula that spawned our Sun and planets was rich in water and complex organic compounds. We now have evidence that this same chemistry exists elsewhere in the universe, in regions that could form solar systems not unlike our own," said Karin Oberg the study's lead author. Oberg is an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
The bonds between carbon and nitrogen in organic compounds like cyanide are essential as they are important for amino acid formation. Researchers found the existence of cyanide at varying distances ranging from 30 to 100 times the sun-earth distance in the MWC 480 star system. This corresponds to a region beyond Neptune called Kupier Belt, in our solar system.
The study also found that the process of cyanide forming is faster than other processes at work which are detrimental to the formation process. The discovery was made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.
