Our solar system may not be as special as we thought. A new study of a young stars protoplanetary disk finds the same kinds of complex organic molecules that are found on the comets in our own solar system. <\/p>\n
The findings, published in the journal Nature, show that the same chemical building blocks that support the kind of life as we know it may regularly form around far-off stars. <\/p>\n
From my point of view, its really good news that were not that special,\"said lead author Karin berg, an astrochemist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. \"We know that life originated somehow in the solar system and it would be very exciting if it also originated somewhere else. <\/p>\n
Having the same kind of chemistry present,\" she added, \"removes one more barrier to that being true. <\/p>\n
Scientists have long wondered what life around other stars, if it exists, might look like. Life on Earth is based around carbon and a handful of other key elements, including nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen. But its unclear if the same kind of life-friendly chemistry has arisen on other worlds outside of our own backyard. <\/p>\n
berg and her colleagues had been using a radio telescope array called the Atacama Large Millimeter\/submillimeter Array in Chile to study a star system called MWC 480, which lies roughly 455 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. <\/p>\n
MWC 480 is very young, and so it still has a wide disk of protoplanetary debris surrounding the star. The stuff in the protoplanetary disk will eventually coalesce to form planets, moons, asteroids, comets the typical denizens of a fully fledged planetary system. <\/p>\n
Our own solar system went through the same process, and so MWC 480 offers something of a snapshot into what our suns protoplanetary disk might have looked like before the planets were formed. <\/p>\n
The scientists hadnt been looking for signs of such complex organic molecules, berg said. But when they went through the data they found a surprising signal one that appeared to be coming from cyanides, particularly complex cyanides. Along with the simplest molecule, hydrogen cyanide (HCN), they also found cyanoacetylene (HC3N) and methyl cyanide (CH3CN). <\/p>\n
The discovery involved \"a bit of luck,\" berg said. \"We weren't actually looking for these complex organics.\" <\/p>\n
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Eureka! Complex organic molecules found in a young star system<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our solar system may not be as special as we thought. Continue reading