The building blocks of life formed earlier than stars and planets

The building blocks of life formed long before the stars, in interstellar clouds made of gas and dust.

This is what merge from the research published in the journal Nature Astronomy and conducted by the Queen Mary University of London, with the group of Sergio Ioppolo, and by the Dutch Leiden Observatory.

With the help of computer models and simulating conditions in interstellar clouds in the laboratory, the researchers studied the formation of the simplest of the 20 amino acids, glycine.

They thus demonstrated that the molecule can be synthesized under the complex conditions that govern the chemistry of space.

 The models and tests developed by the authors indicate that glycine can form on the surface of frozen dust grains and without energy expenditure, contradicting current theories that indicate the need for UV radiation as an energy source to synthesize the amino acid.

 According to the authors of the study, the presence of this brick of life in comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, studied by the Rosetta mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), and in the material collected on comet Wild 2 by the NASA mission Stardust, "indicates that glycine is already formed inside the dense interstellar clouds, well before they turn into new stars and new planets ”.

 The comets, the experts specify, are in fact cosmic fossils, formed from the most primitive material of the Solar System, which reflects the chemical composition dating back to the times when the Sun and its planets were still in formation.

 “Once formed - concludes Ioppolo - glycine can become the precursor of other organic molecules, more complex.

Like other amino acids that, included in celestial bodies such as comets, can then be transferred to young planets in formation ”, as probably happened to Earth.