NASA discovers the building blocks of life were forged in starlight

All living organisms from germs to jellyfish to human beings aremade of the same basic components. But where do those building blocks of life come from?

According to new revelations gleaned fromdata collected by a European Space Agency telescope, the answers may lie in the stars. Or, more specifically, in starlight.

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Astronomers studying data from theHerschelSpace Observatory, now out of operation, have discovered that ultraviolet starlight may be the key to creating the fundamental molecules necessary for the formation of life that is,carbon atoms connected to hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and other elements.

"The sun is the driving source of almost all the life on Earth. Now, we have learned that starlight drives the formation of chemicals that are precursors to chemicals that we need to make life," said Patrick Morris, leadauthor of the paper and researcher at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center atCaltechin Pasadena, Calif.,in a statement released by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The chemistry of the Orion Nebula

The researchers were looking at data collected from the Orion Nebula, amassive cloud of gas and dust some1,300 light years away. Orion isthe closeststar-forming region to Earththat generatesmassive stars.

Specifically,they were observing organic molecules within Orion carbon-hydrogen (CH)and its ionized, or charged, version (CH+).

Before now, it was theorized that CH and CH+ the first organic molecules discovered in interstellar space were the result ofshock waves from so-called traumatic events, likeexploding supernovae or young stars spitting out jets of gas.

The theory was that shock waves wouldcause the material they encountered to vibrate, and that those vibrations wouldknock electrons off atoms, leaving them ionizedand morelikely to bond together toform more complexmolecules.

Life born from light, notshock

But data from Herschel shows nocorrelation between shock events and the presence of those molecules.

"These CH+ molecules were more likely created by the ultraviolet emission of very young stars in the Orion Nebula, which, compared to the sun, are hotter, far more massive and emit much more ultraviolet light," NASA explains.

"When a molecule absorbs a photon of light, it becomes 'excited'and has more energy to react with other particles. In the case of a hydrogen molecule, the hydrogen molecule vibrates, rotates faster or both when hit by an ultraviolet photon."

This excitedhydrogen reacts withcarbonsthat originally formed in stars to create CH+ and CH, the scientists conclude.

"This is the initiation of the whole carbon chemistry,"John Pearson, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratoryand the study's co-author, said."If you want to form anything more complicated, it goes through that pathway."

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