Nurseries Long Before Stars are Born
University of Arizona | Steward Observatory | 2020 Jun 11
Using UArizona's radio telescope on Kitt Peak, a team of astronomers probed a vast, cosmic cloud of gas and dust for traces of organic molecules that form the building blocks for life. The team found that such molecules appear hundreds of thousands of years before stars even begin to form.
Complex organic molecules that could serve as building blocks for life are more ubiquitous than previously thought in cold clouds of gas and dust that give birth to stars and planets, according to astronomers at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory.
These molecules also appear much earlier than conventional wisdom suggested, hundreds of thousands of years before stars actually begin to form, the researchers found. Published in The Astrophysical Journal, the results challenge existing theories that require an environment heated by proto-stars – stars in the making – for complex organic molecules to become observable.
The study is the first to look for the signatures of two complex organic molecules, methanol and acetaldehyde, in a substantial number of prospective star-forming sites, unlike previous observations, which had mostly focused on individual objects. Pre-stellar or starless cores are so-named because while they do not yet contain any stars, they mark regions in space where cold dust and gases coalesce into the seeds that will give rise to stars and possibly planets. ...
Prevalence of Complex Organic Molecules in Starless and Prestellar Cores
within the Taurus Molecular Cloud ~ Samantha Scibelli, Yancy Shirley
- Astrophysical Journal 891(1):73 (2020 Mar 01) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab7375
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:2002.02469 > 06 Feb 2020
viewtopic.php?p=300443#p300443