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Organic Molecules Found Circling Nearby Star
sciencehabit writes Astronomers have detected chemical precursors of building blocks of life in the large disk of dust and gas whirling around a young nearby star. These complex organic molecules, two forms of cyanide and one chemically related compound, likely formed after the protoplanetary disk collapsed, the researchers say. The same chemicals are found in roughly similar proportions in comets circling our sun, which may have brought them to Earth billions of years ago. "We know that the solar system isn't unique in its number of planets or abundance of water," says Karin Öberg, an astrochemist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Now we know that we're not unique in organic chemistry. From a life in the universe point of view, this is great news."
Many are increasingly of the opinion that we've all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some say that even the trees have been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
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First a story about how plentiful water is, and now we discover that the molecules of life are plentiful too. There is absolutely no doubt that life has a foothold everywhere in this universe. We just need to get out there and find it. Then we can either fuck it, eat it, tax it, or worship it.
I'll grant you - it's not unlike "We've confirmed what most people might assume, that similar circumstances lead to similar results", but this lets us start discarding that word 'assume'. Also, please consider: if similar chemistries evolve due to similar conditions, it seems likely to me that we will find life as we know it. We won't have to waste time looking for Andromeda particles or talking to rocks looking for silicon-based life or even negotiating with the Tholiads or the friggin' LED's of Zetar, it'll be life that looks (more or less) familiar.
Astronomers have detected chemical precursors of building blocks of the components needed to construct the conditions required to make the environment necessary to gather the required elemental components of life.