[sandyphoebetvmaa]

Sweet building blocks of life found around young star
by Staff Writers
Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Aug 30, 2012

Astronomers have for the first time found glycolaldehyde molecules around a young sun-like star. Glycolaldehyde is a an important pre-biotic species, a simple sugar, consisting of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms. Through observations with ALMA the researchers have shown that the molecules are located within a region with an extent corresponding to our own solar system - and thus exist in the gas from which planets possibly are formed around the young star later in its evolution. Credit: ESO.


Life is made up of a series of complex organic molecules, including sugars. A team of astronomers led by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, have now observed a simple sugar molecule in the gas surrounding a young star and this discovery proves that the building blocks of life were already present during planet formation.

The star was observed with the new large international telescope, Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile.

The ALMA telescopes are able to zoom in and study the details of newly formed stars and their rotating discs of dust and gas, which subsequently clumps together and forms planets. Among other things, the astronomers would like to investigate the gas for the presence of water vapour and examine the chemical composition for complex molecules.

Sugar around new stars
"In the protoplanetary disc of gas and dust surrounding the young, newly formed star, we found glycolaldehyde molecules, which are a simple form of sugar.

"It is one of the building blocks in the process that leads to the formation of RNA and the first step in the direction of biology," explains astrophysicist Jes Jorgensen, Associate Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute and the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at the University of Copenhagen.

He explains that at first the gas and dust cloud is extremely cold (only around 10 degrees above absolute zero at minus 273 degrees C) and simple gases such as carbon monoxide and methane settle on particles of dust and solidify as ice. Here on the particles of dust, the otherwise volatile gases come close to each other and can bond together and form more complex molecules.

When the star has been formed in the middle of the gas and dust cloud, it emits heat, and the inner parts of the rotating cloud surrounding the star is heated to around room temperature, after which the chemically complex molecules on the particles of dust evaporate as gas. This gas emits radiation as radio waves at low frequencies and it is this radiation that researchers can observe with the ALMA telescopes.

Precursors for biology before planets
The star is located only 400 light years from us - so, seen in an astronomical context, it is right in our own neighbourhood.

With the very high resolution of the new telescopes, researchers now have the opportunity to study the details of the dust and gas clouds, and in addition to the sugar molecules the researchers also saw signs of a number of other complex organic molecules, including ethylene-glycol, methyl-formate and ethanol.

"The complex molecules in the cloud surrounding the newly formed star tell us that the building blocks of life may be among the first formed.

"One of the big questions is whether it is common that these organic molecules are formed so early in the star and planet formation process - and how complex they can become before they are incorporated into new planets.

"This could potentially tell us something about the possibility that life might arise elsewhere and whether precursors to biology are already present before the planets have been formed," explains Jes Jorgensen.





http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Sw..._star_999.html

[Quigoxito]

The building blocks of life...Everywhere in apparent abundance throughout the known Universe and everywhere we have looked basically.

Gives you a warm inner glow it does!

[Gscvbhhv]

Japanese spacecraft to search for clues of Earth's first life
by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 30, 2012

File image.


In a Physics World special report on Japan, Dennis Normile reports on how the Japanese space agency JAXA plans to land a spacecraft onto an asteroid in 2018 to search for clues of how life began on Earth.

Hayabusa 2 will be JAXA's second attempt at collecting material from an asteroid, after its first mission returned to Earth in June 2010. Hayabusa 2 will be launched in 2014 with a view to settling on the targeted asteroid, named 1999 JU3, in mid-2018 before arriving back on Earth in 2020.

As soon as Hayabusa 2 safely reaches its destination it will fire fingertip-sized bullets into the surface of the asteroid at speeds of 300 m s and collect the rebounded fragments. After moving to a safe distance away, it will then detonate an impactor module, which will fire a 2 kg projectile into the asteroid to create a 2 m crater.

Hayabusa 2 will then return to the crater to collect samples that, as Normile writes, will not have been exposed to space weather and solar radiation before and will therefore have been created in the very early days of the solar system.

It is thought that the asteroid's distance from the Sun will mean a better environment for preserving water and amino acids, which may add weight to the theory that asteroids and comets helped bring life to Earth.

JAXA's first mission, Hayabusa, overcame engine failures, fuel loss and communication blackouts to finally return to Earth after successfully landing on the asteroid Itokawa.

Tens of thousands of people in Japan watched the spacecraft re-enter the Earth's atmosphere via Internet streaming and more than 100,000 people queued at several venues around the country to catch a glimpse of the capsule when it went on display.

A malfunction during the original mission meant that bullets could not be fired to collect samples; however, specks of dust from the asteroid were caught in the collection canister, meaning some material was returned for analysis.

Shogo Tachibana, a cosmological chemist at Hokkaido University who is principal investigator for sampling for Hayabusa 2, hopes the material from the second mission will be free of contamination and therefore give a clearer insight into the early days of the solar system, unlike samples of meteorites that have crashed to Earth in the past.




http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ja..._life_999.html

[Nundduedola]

Sweet building blocks of life found around young star
by Staff Writers
Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Aug 30, 2012


Sugar around new stars
"In the protoplanetary disc of gas and dust surrounding the young, newly formed star, we found glycolaldehyde molecules, which are a simple form of sugar.

"It is one of the building blocks in the process that leads to the formation of RNA and the first step in the direction of biology," explains astrophysicist Jes Jorgensen, Associate Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute and the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at the University of Copenhagen.





http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Sw..._star_999.html

I think it is too too far extrapolation of glycoaldehyde to sugars

[UvjqTVVC]

> I think it is too too far extrapolation of glycolaldehyde to sugars

Perhaps, since it's only a dimer, but it does have the correct 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to oxygen that characterises sugars; which makes it a true carbohydrate. The ratio of elements is important in the origins of life. For proteins you need a H:C:N:O ratio of 6:4:4:1, for sugars (eg. the ribose of RNA) you need a ratio of 2:1:0:1, for nucleotides you need a ratio of 1:1:1:0. For phosphates you need a different ratio again - all four necessary components of modern life must have formed under different chemical conditions.