Astronomers have discovered sugar molecules in the gas surrounding a young binary star, with a mass similar to the Sun, 400 light years from Earth, concluding that components necessary for life in the Solar System existed during the formation of the planets.
The discovery, announced in a statement today by the European Southern Observatory (OES), was made from a radio telescope with high-precision antennas, located in Llano de Chajnantor in northern Chile, to five thousand feet.
The draft notes - 'Atacama Large Millimeter / Submillimeter Array' (ALMA) - the result of a partnership between Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with Chile.
An international team of astronomers, led by Danish Jes Jørgensen, Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark, found glycolaldehyde molecules in the gas surrounding a binary star (two stars orbiting a common center of mass) newly formed, with mass similar to Sun, called IRAS 16293-2422, about 400 light-years away, relatively close to Earth.
Four years ago, another team from the Institute of Millimeter Radio Astronomy, detected with the aid of a telescope with six antennas 15 meters in diameter, in the French Alps, the same molecule, but about 26 thousand light years from Earth in a region of massive star formation outside the center of the Galaxy.
The glycolaldehyde is a simple sugar that is distinguished by sucrose molecule that exists in most food and drink. The sugar consists of molecules that contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.
For the first time, the glycolaldehyde found "as close to a solar-type star at distances comparable to the distance of Uranus to the Sun in the Solar System ', marks the European Southern Observatory, adding that" the discovery shows that some of the components chemicals necessary for life existed on this system at the time of planetary formation. "
The astronomer Jes Jørgensen, lead author of the scientific paper to be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, describes that "the disk of gas and dust surrounding the newly formed star" was observed "a form of simple sugar not unlike sugar 'that sets in coffee and that constitutes "an ingredient in the formation of RNA, which, like DNA, to which is attached, is one of the building blocks of life."
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) consists of molecules that contain genetic instructions which coordinate the functioning of living organisms and contribute to the building of proteins and RNA (ribonucleic acid) responsible for the synthesis of cell proteins, but with molecules of dimensions very inferior to the formed DNA.
According to the European Southern Observatory, 'the precise measurements made in the laboratory of characteristic wavelengths of radio waves emitted by glycolaldehyde were indispensable for the identification made by the team of the molecule in space. "
Besides glycolaldehyde, the binary star IRAS 16293-2422 is also known to have a number of other complex organic molecules, such as ethylene glycol, methyl metanoato and ethanol enhances OES.
For the astronomer Cécile Favre, University of Aarhus, Denmark, who also participated in the investigation, the extraordinary in the ALMA observations is that "the sugar molecules are falling toward the stars System» Solar.
"The sugar molecules not only are the right place to find your way to a planet, are also moving in the right direction", he argues.
The question now, according to astronomer Jes Jørgensen, is knowing "what the complexity that these molecules can reach before being incorporated into new planets."
The clouds of gas and dust, forming planetary systems and disintegrate to give new stars are extremely cold (usually are about ten degrees above).
The European Southern Observatory explains that many gases solidify in the form of ice on the dust particles, which then join to form more complex molecules.
"When a star forms in the middle of a cloud of gas and dust rotating, heats the inner regions of the cloud to about ambient temperature, evaporating molecules chemically complex and forming gases that emit radiation at characteristic radio waves," explains OES, adding that these are waves' can be mapped with the help of powerful radio telescopes such as ALMA. "
The construction of ALMA will be completed next year, when 66 high-precision antennas are fully operational.
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