Researchers discover alcohol around a distant star, but don't rejoice too soon - it's methanol
Around the young star HD 100453, located 330 light-years from Earth, astronomers have for the first time detected isotopes of methanol, a type of alcohol that is an important building block for life. The discovery was made using the ALMA radio telescope in Chile. This is reported in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
What is known
Methanol is not just alcohol (not the kind you get in a bar), but a molecule that is involved in the formation of amino acids and other organic compounds. And this, as you know, is the basis of life. For the first time in history, scientists have detected methanol isotopes in the gas around a young star. According to the lead author of the study, Alice Booth from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, this finding provides a key to understanding how the "ingredients" for life on Earth were formed.
It is equally interesting that the chemical composition of the circumstellar disc HD 100453 turned out to be very similar to that of comets in our solar system. This gives another plus to the theory that it was comets that could have delivered the organic molecules necessary for life to Earth. Study co-author Milou Temmink emphasised: "Comets may be the reason why life - including us - came into existence in the first place."
How does it work? ALMA has been able to detect methanol molecules, which in systems with smaller stars usually freeze and become inaccessible for observation. And HD 100453 is a star 1.6 times more massive than the Sun, so its surrounding gas remains warm enough for methanol to be in a gaseous state.
What does this mean for the search for life?
It's simple: if comets carry organic matter across the Universe, then this can happen not only here, but also on exoplanets near other stars. This discovery is pushing scientists to search more actively for planets with similar conditions. Perhaps, right now, someone on some other piece of space is also thinking that Friday is coming.
In any case, space alcohol is not for parties, but for unravelling the deepest questions: how and why life came to be.
Source: MSN with reference to The Astrophysical Journal Letters
