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."

Comments

Life

[ArcadeMan]

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.

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.