Found the biggest building block of life, about to land on a new planet

The largest molecule found in a disk of dust and gas orbiting a small star has been identified. It is a building block of life.

According to Science Alert, when searching for a swirling cloud around the star IRS 48, scientists detected signs of dimethyl ether, a molecule containing nine atoms. This oxygen-carrying molecule can act as the building block for sugars and other biomolecules, i.e. we can think of it as a prebiotic compound.

Close-up of exotic molecules, the building blocks of early life, roaming the protoplanetary disk

"From this discovery, we can learn more about the origin of life on our planet and thus get a better idea of ​​the potential for life in other planetary systems" - astronomer literature Nashanty Brunken from Leiden University (Netherlands), research team member, said.

Dimethyl ether is composed of 2 carbon atoms, 6 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, with the chemical formula CH3OCH3.

These molecules are thought to form in regions of cold star formation, which predate the formation of stars.

This discovery comes from the fact that in the disk around IRS 48, a star 444 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, scientists discovered an asymmetrical crescent, which acts as a "dust trap." .

This dust trap has produced a plethora of complex molecules, and these molecules can clump into ever-larger clumps, which can eventually form comets, asteroids or even planets.

When the star's radiation reaches the dust trap, it causes the ice to sublimate. Thus, using the powerful ALMA telescope located in Chile, the scientists detected the signatures of the molecules based on the spectrum.

This exciting discovery also shows that our "ancestral" molecules may have roamed the universe long before the Earth was formed.