James Webb Telescope Discovers Alien Molecule 'Critical to Emergence of Life'
For the first time, astronomers from an international scientific team have detected a previously unidentified carbon molecule essential to the emergence of life.
Thanks to the excellent spatial and spectral resolution of the James Webb Space Telescope , a team of scientists led by Olivier Berné, a researcher at the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology in Toulouse , managed to detect a carbon compound that had previously been impossible to identify.
A molecule essential to the emergence of life
Known as the methyl cation, this molecule is particularly important because it facilitates the formation of more complex carbon-based molecules. This discovery, published in the journal Nature on June 26 , indeed attests that the methyl cation has the unique property of reacting relatively inefficiently with hydrogen, the most abundant element in our universe, but of reacting easily with other molecules and thus initiate the growth of more complex carbon-based molecules.
Because carbon compounds are the basis of all known life, they are of particular interest to scientists who have been searching for years to understand how life developed on Earth and therefore how it might develop elsewhere in the universe.
This molecule, dubbed CH3+, has been “sought after for several decades by astronomers, because it is considered crucial in extraterrestrial chemistry ,” the team of Toulouse researchers said in a press release. "The methyl cation is sort of at the root of organic chemistry."
The importance of ultraviolet radiation
The miraculous discovery was made in the Orion Nebula , a kind of star nursery which fascinates astronomers and whose observation is much easier than other nebulae, and more precisely, in a young stellar system endowed with a protoplanetary disk, located about 1,350 light-years away in the Orion Nebula.
Although this star is only one-tenth the mass of the Sun, the system is constantly bombarded by powerful ultraviolet radiation from hot, young, massive stars nearby. Usually considered hostile and destructive for the formation of complex organic molecules, scientists nevertheless believe that it would play a crucial role in the existence of the CH3+ molecule.
"This clearly shows that ultraviolet radiation can completely alter the chemistry of a protoplanetary disk ," says the study's lead author, Olivier Berné, from the University of Toulouse. "It may in fact play an essential role in the early chemical steps in the origin of life by contributing to the production of CH3+ - something that may have been underestimated before."
A spectacular advance in the study of interstellar organic chemistry
The James Webb telescope thus opens new perspectives for the study of interstellar organic chemistry, a field that fascinates many astronomers. "This detection not only validates Webb's incredible sensitivity, but also confirms the postulated central importance of CH3+ in interstellar chemistry ," said team member Marie-Aline Martin-Drumel of Université Paris-Saclay. scientist.
The role of the methyl cation in interstellar carbon chemistry was already a theory in the 1970s, but until now it was virtually impossible to detect. The unique capabilities of the Webb spacecraft ultimately confirmed this theory, which is all the more important “in a region of space where planets capable of supporting life could eventually form,” says NASA .
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