JWST Sees Organic Molecules Swirling Around a Newborn Star - by spacewriter
Essentially, it’s taking simple building blocks and churning out those complex organic molecules. They’re precursors to the chemicals of life—existing long before conditions on any nearby worlds have even formed. This is not the first time astronomers have the. Other clouds of gas and dust seem to show these complex chemicals, too. But, Webb’s exquisite data show more details about what’s going on in the cloud.
A false-color image obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope of a protostar . JWST uses infrared instruments to study how protostars shape the chemistry of icy clouds . Courtesy: NASA, ESA, CSAA research team at the Japanese research institution RIKEN analyzed the Webb data from this newly forming star. They concluded that these complex organic molecules are forming on the surfaces of ice grains in the cloud of gas and dust.
“We want to obtain definitive proof of such formation pathways,” said Yao-Lun Yang of the RIKEN Star and Planet Formation Laboratory. “And JWST provides the best opportunity to do so.” To understand what’s happening at the star, Yang and the team used data from observations of the star made by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument in 2022. It wasn’t the first time telescopes had looked at MIRI 15398-3359. Previous observations had found some of these chemicals in the gas phase—well after they’d formed. The MIRI observations dug more deeply into the cloud to identify these species in their ice phase.
As the star progresses in its evolution, and possible planets form in the protoplanetary disk around MIRI 15398-3359, Webb should be able to continue peeking inside its birthplace. Tracing the formation of life on those planets will require scientists to track the continued evolution of those complex organic molecules from gas clouds to a planetary surface. It’s a very promising breakthrough in understanding the long road from star formation to life.
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