DNA consists of organic molecules and proteins. Did you ever think from where the basic compounds necessary to build these molecules come from? If you didn’t, never mind. Astronomers at W. M. Keck Observatory have found them within the inner regions of a planet-forming disk. The object is known as “IRS 46″. It is located in the Milky Way galaxy, about 375 light years from Earth.
The galaxy is in the constellation Ophiuchus. Where did pre-biotic organic molecules in comets and the gas giant planets in our own solar system come from? The Spitzer Space Telescope is letting us study these young stellar objects in new and revealing ways.
“If you add hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and water together in a test tube, and give them an appropriate surface on which to be concentrated and react, you’ll get a slew of organic compounds including amino acids and a DNA purine base called adenine,” said Keck Astronomer Dr. Geoffrey Blake, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and co-author of the paper.
The astronomers believe that this finding can detect these same molecules in the planet zone of a star hundreds of light-years away! Does this finding eventually give us clues about where life may form in the universe?
Via: Spaceref, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, News Wire
Harbinger to Proteins and DNA Found in Planet-Forming Disk
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