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.