A team of astronomers has found traces of sugar molecules present in the gases around a young Sun-like star with the help of a powerful telescope Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).
This is the first time ever that sugar molecules have been spotted in space around a star and the invention infers that s that the building blocks of life are in the right place, at the right time, to be included in planets forming around the star.
The astronomers spotted molecules of glycolaldehyde-one of the simple form of sugar-in the gas in the surroundings of a young binary star IRAS 16293-2422 with similar mass to that of Sun.
Though, Glycolaldehyde has been observed in interstellar space earlier also, but this is the first time it has been seen so near to a Sun-like star, which is at a distance that can be compared with the distance of Uranus from the Sun in the Solar System. This discovery shows that some of the chemical compounds that are essential for existence of life in this system existed at the time of planet formation.
"In the disc of gas and dust surrounding this newly formed star, we found glycolaldehyde, which is a simple form of sugar, not much different to the sugar we put in coffee," explained Jes Jorgensen (Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark), the lead author of the paper.
"This molecule is one of the ingredients in the formation of RNA, which-like DNA, to which it is related-is one of the building blocks of life," Jorgensen said.
Even the high sensitivity of ALMA and its technical capability to operate at the shortest wavelengths was critical for these observations, which were then made with a partial array of antennas during the observatory's Science Verification phase.
"What it is really exciting about our findings is that the ALMA observations reveal that the sugar molecules are falling in towards one of the stars of the system. The sugar molecules are not only in the right place to find their way onto a planet, but they are also going in the right direction," said team member Cecile Favre (Aarhus University, Denmark).
"A big question is: how complex can these molecules become before they are incorporated into new planets? This could tell us something about how life might arise elsewhere, and ALMA observations are going to be vital to unravel this mystery," concludes Jorgensen.
The details of the work have been described in a paper to appear in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
-With inputs from ANI
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