Compounds called pyrene have been detected in the Taurus molecular cloud
THAT
A complex form of carbon essential to life on Earth has been observed for the first time outside the solar system. Its presence helps show how the compounds necessary for life can come from space.
The most abundant form of carbon in the universe is that found in the gas carbon monoxide, but it is not clear how this is converted into the complex compounds found in biological life, which usually have stronger chemical bonds.
Astronomers have seen asteroids – Ryugu for example – containing compounds with stronger carbon bonds. Such space rocks are believed to have provided the ingredients for life on Earth, but the original source of these carbon-based compounds is still not well understood.
now, Brett McGuire At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have searched for and detected a complex carbon-based molecule called pyrene. star-forming region It’s called the Taurus molecular cloud. At 430 light years away, this is one of the closest clouds to Earth.
It was used by researchers Green Bank Observatory To search for the radio signature of pyrene in West Virginia. These molecules would be crucial mediators between carbon monoxide and complex carbon molecules in living organisms.
Pure pyrene is not so easy to detect with radio waves, so McGuire and his colleagues looked for cyanopyrene, which is pyrene with an attached cyanide molecule, and compared it to the signature of cyanopyrene in the laboratory, which they had carefully produced and measured. In the ground laboratory.
The cloud where the researchers saw cyanopyrene is very cold, about 10 degrees above absolute zero (-263°C), which means we’re looking at these carbon compounds long before a star formed, McGuire says.
“Now, we’re seeing both ends of this life cycle,” he says. We’re seeing the archaeological chemical record of our solar system in asteroids and on Earth, says McGuire, “and now we’re looking back in time to a place where another solar system will form, and we’re seeing these molecules forming there. We are seeing the beginning of the archaeological record.”
Assuming the radio signal observed by McGuire and his team from the Taurus molecular cloud is representative of other places in space, it suggests that cyanopyrene is very abundant, and possibly one of the largest chemical reservoirs of complex carbon in the universe, he says.
Discovering these molecules and the environment they exist in means that chemists can begin to sketch out the exact chemical reactions and pathways that make up life on Earth, like nucleic acids. Martin McCostra Heriot-Watt University, UK.
It is not easy to explain how pyrene molecules are formed, he says. “What else is there in that environment (the Pyrenees) that will take us? We are seeing here a much richer understanding of the complex chemistry associated with these aromatic molecules.’
Topics:
