Susan Iglesias-Groth from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands and Martina Marin-Dobrincik
Some of the molecules found are consideredimportant building blocks for creating more complex structures. For example, amino acids that formed the genetic code of ancient microorganisms and led to the flourishing of life on Earth. Analyzing how these precursor molecules are distributed in the regions where planets are most likely to form is an important task for astrophysics.
The Perseus Cloud is one of the closestto Solar System star formation regions. Many of its stars are young and have protoplanetary disks in which other worlds may be born, scientists write. “This is an outstanding organic chemistry laboratory,” explains Iglesias-Groth, who discovered fullerenes in the same cloud in 2019.
Fullerene is a molecular compound that is a convex closed polyhedron composed of tricoordinated carbon atoms.
As part of a new study, scientistsfound in the interior of IC348 molecules such as molecular hydrogen (H₂), hydroxyl (OH), water (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂) and ammonia (NH₃), as well as several carbon-containing molecules that play an important role in ;production of more complex hydrocarbons and prebiotic molecules hydrogen cyanide (HCN), acetylene (C₂H₂), diacetylene (C₄H₂), cyanoacetylene (HC₃N), cyanobutadiine (HC₅N), ethane (C₂H₆), hexatrine (C₆H₂) and&n bsp; benzene ( C₆H₆).
The data also shows the presence of more complexmolecules such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and C₆₀ and C₇₀ fullerenes. “IC348 appears to be very rich and diverse in its molecular composition,” explains Iglesias-Gort. “We are the first to observe molecules in the diffuse gas from which stars and protoplanetary disks form.”
Presence of prebiotic moleculesin interstellar places so close to a star cluster suggests that young planets may be undergoing accretion processes that contribute to the formation of complex organic molecules.
For the study, scientists used data from NASA's Spitzer satellite. The next step is to use the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
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On the cover: artistic composition of the "soup" of prebiotic molecules around the protoplanetary disk
Credit: Gabriel Pérez Diaz (IAC)