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Life’s building blocks common in space, NASA says
Oct. 13, 2005
Courtesy NASA Ames Research Center
and World Science staff
Organic chemicals that play a crucial role in the chemistry of life are common in space, a study by NASA researchers has found.
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A NASA Spitzer Space Telescope image of the spiral galaxy M81,
about 12 million light years from Earth. Infrared light emitted by polycyclic nitrogen-containing aromatic hydrocarbon (PANH) molecules is shown in red. This emission,
which is a type of light less energetic than visible light, is stimulated by star
and planet formation along the edges of the spiral arms.
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These chemicals are “prevalent throughout the universe,” said Douglas
Hudgins of NASA Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, chief author of a study detailing the findings in the Oct. 10 issue of the
Astrophysical Journal.
“NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has shown complex organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons… are found in every nook and cranny of our galaxy.”
“While this is important to astronomers, it has been of little interest to astrobiologists, scientists who search for life beyond Earth,” he
added. This is because these molecules aren’t important to biology in their
simple form.
But his work found that in space, the bulk of them “also carry nitrogen in their structures. That changes everything.”
“Much of the chemistry of life, including DNA, requires organic molecules that contain nitrogen,” said team member Louis Allamandola. “Chlorophyll, the substance that enables photosynthesis in plants, is a good example of this class of compounds, called polycyclic aromatic nitrogen heterocycles, or PANHs. Ironically, PANHs are formed in abundance around dying stars. So even in death, the seeds of life are sown.”
The NASA Ames team studied the infrared “fingerprint” of PANHs in laboratory experiments and with computer simulations to learn more about infrared radiation that astronomers have detected coming from space. They used data from the European Space Agency’s Infrared Space Observatory satellite.
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