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According to the new study, life’s building blocks such as amino acids may have formed in dark interstellar clouds long before the regions of gas and dust transformed into stars and planets.
An international team of scientists, led by experts from Queen Mary University of London, mimicked the conditions of a dark interstellar dust cloud.
They found that glycine, the simplest amino acid and essential building block, can form under the harsh conditions that control the chemistry in space.
This suggests that glycine and possibly other amino acids could form in dense interstellar clouds before turning into new stars and planets.
Amino acids are stored in comets – the purest material in our solar system from the start – which are then sent to the young planets.
They found that glycine, the simplest amino acid and an essential building block for life, could form under the harsh conditions that control the chemistry in space.
“The building blocks of proteins that are relevant to life on Earth could eventually form and continue even in the early stages of star formation until the formation of planetary systems,” said lead author Dr. Sergio Ioppolo. MailOnline.
Comets are the purest material in our solar system and reflect the arrangement of molecules that were present when our sun and planet were formed.
Detection of wisteria in the coma of comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko and in samples returned to Earth from the Stardust mission shows that amino acids, such as wisteria, formed long before stars or planets.
Until recently, however, it was believed that the formation of glycine required energy, which limited the environment in which it was formed.
In the new study, a team of astrophysicists and astrochemical modellers was able to show that it is possible to form glycine on the surface of frozen dust grains, in the absence of energy, by “dark chemistry”.
An international team of scientists, led by experts from Queen Mary University of London, simulated the conditions of a dark interstellar dust cloud
The seeds of life formed before the birth of stars and planets, and since the processes we are studying are universal, this also means that the universe must be polluted by the molecules we think of as the building blocks of life as the building blocks of life. . that we know. . ‘
“Now we have to look for it,” Iopolo said in an interview with MailOnline.
This finding contradicts previous research which suggested that UV radiation was needed to produce this molecule.
Research teams from around the world are primarily based at the Leiden Observatory astrophysics Laboratory in the Netherlands.
Dr Ioppolo, of Queen Mary University of London, said that dark chemistry is chemical without requiring energetic radiation and forms in dark clouds far from the stars.
“In the lab, we can simulate the conditions of interstellar dark clouds where cold dust particles are covered with a thin layer of ice,” he said.
They are then “treated” by colliding with the atoms, causing the fragmentation of the precursor species and the recombination of reactive intermediates.
Scientists first showed that methylamine, the precursor species for glycine found in comet 67P, could form.
Using a unique ultra-vacuum arrangement, equipped with several atomic beamlines and precise diagnostic tools, they can confirm that wisteria can also form and that the presence of ice water is essential in this process. .
Further investigations using astrochemical models confirmed the results and allowed the researchers to extrapolate the data obtained on a typical laboratory time scale of one day under interstellar conditions, spanning millions of years.
Detection of wisteria in coma 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko (pictured) and in samples returned from Earth by the Stardust mission shows that amino acids, such as wisteria, formed long before any star or planet.
‘From there, we found that small but significant amounts of glycine can form in space over time,’ said Professor Herma Cuppen of Radboud University, Nijmegen.
“The important conclusion here is that the molecules thought to make up life formed at a stage prior to the formation of stars and planets,” said Harold Linnartz of the Leiden Observatory.
“This initial formation of glycine in the development of star-forming regions implies that this amino acid could form anywhere in space and be stored on most ice before being collected on comets and animals. the planets that make up matter. from which the planets were finally created. ‘
Glycine, and possibly other amino acids, can form in dense interstellar clouds before turning into new stars and planets. They can then be sent via comets or asteroids such as the young Earth to the planets
“Once formed, glycine can also be a precursor to other complex organic molecules,” said Dr. Ioppolo closed.
By the same mechanism, other functional groups can be added to the glycine backbone, leading to the formation of other amino acids, such as alanine and serine, in the dark clouds of space.
“Finally, this enriched supply of organic molecules is absorbed into celestial bodies, such as comets, and sent to young planets, as is the case with our earth and many other planets.”
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