Naphthalene Found In Outer Space

Adam Korbitz writes with an excerpt from his blog on an exciting discovery in space: "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."

Comments

Unbeknownst to many

[Trails]

An early draft of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001:A Space Odyssey contained the line

My God, it's full of mothballs

which was changed during editing, but further reinforces the prescience of Mr. Clarke.

Another win for panspermia theory

[symbolset]

Literally "the origin of life is everywhere," panspermia theory posits that the seeds life exist all over the universe. A related but separate theory called "exogenesis" posits that life began somewhere other than Earth and was delivered here.

We've observed vast clouds of organic material far larger than our galaxy in the reaches of space. Now we've discovered prebiotic chemicals there. It's not that much of a stretch to guess that life-as-we-know-it is not uncommon. Intelligence (such as it is?) may be less common. Given the vastness of space and time it's not unreasonable to hope that we're not alone.

The reason why this is important

[spineboy]

Napthalene is a conjugated benzene ring compound. This then somewhat shows that complex ring compounds can be made in space. If these, then, can be made, then the jump to the DNA bases, and amino acid bases is not too far away.

Re:The reason why this is important

[moderatorrater]

Perhaps, then, the Star Trek vision of the future, where all life forms are similar, could be correct, at least to the extent that they're all DNA and carbon based? Also, wouldn't this push the chances of life evolving on a suitable planet close to 100%?

Re:No moths in outer space!

[arth1]

Natural fibers are more susceptible to them than synthetics, which we use more of now.

A plausible answer, but a wrong one. It's not just moths that are more scarce inside our homes, but other flying insects too. Few homes have fly paper hanging in various rooms anymore. And young people today panic if they get a bumblebee inside the house -- they simply don't know how to deal with it, because they almost never have to.

The reason is simply that insects had an easier time flying through an open window or chimney than an air conditioner or electric/gas powered heater. The window screen is pretty new too -- even where available earlier, the windows were usually side-hinged and not sliding, and window screens had to be much bigger, and it was a hassle to add and remove them.

These days, you only get large flying insects entering when a door is open.
Cockroaches, ants and other crawling insects, you still get. And fruit flies, which people bring in with plants and produce.

Re:Would it really be that hard?

[symbolset]

For all we know, our solar system just whipped right through a cloud of stellar cooked organics, and we practically just have life rained down on our little world.

And since all the stars we can closely observe have planets, to expect that the star that went supernova and gave us all the elements above Iron did not also have them is perhaps silly.

So... Is the "stuff of life" common or not? Further study is needed and is under way. We may discover in the Oort cloud the seeds of life. If we do, that should lay the question to rest.