Sweet space: sugar from STAR

In a cloud of gas and dust around young stars are found far monosaccharides. The simplest the "building blocks of life" - exactly the right time and the right place to be on the planet-forming.

Binary star IRAS 16293-2422 is not so far, only 400 light-years from Earth in the gas and dust cloud surrounding the Rho Ophiuchi. Her entourage Danish astronomer Jess Jorgensen (Jes Jorgensen) and colleagues observed in the infrared, with the observatory  ALMA , revealed traces  glikolaldegida .

This extremely simple monosaccharide not first detected in space, but this time it is in close proximity to the solar-type star, at a distance comparable to the orbit of Uranus. The young star has not yet acquired the planetary system, but simple "building blocks of life" it is available, ready to be on planets form, and then - who knows - maybe in RNA first organisms.

Such clouds, life-giving stars and their planets have a very low temperature, many of the substances in them together and freeze together can form a relatively complex molecules and molecular complexes. But then, when the lights in the center of the young star, it begins to heat up the gas around quite normal temperatures. Ice evaporates - and complex compounds form molecular clouds, the composition of which can be explained by the spectral analysis of the radiation parent star.

Relatively close to the position of IRAS 16293-2422 Earth gives a good chance that in the future, this is an interesting place to be studied in detail. Who knows, you can find here a more complex molecule "building blocks of life" and to shed light on the mystery of its origin.