Spitzer Finds Ingredients for Life 10 Billion Light-Years Away

Spitzer Finds Life Components in Young Universe
July 28, 2005

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found the ingredients for life all the way back to a time when the universe was a mere youngster.

Using Spitzer, scientists have detected organic molecules in galaxies when our universe was one-fourth of its current age of about 14 billion years. These large molecules, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are comprised of carbon and hydrogen. The molecules are considered to be among the building blocks of life.

These complex molecules are very common on Earth. They form any time carbon-based materials are not burned completely. They can be found in sooty exhaust from cars and airplanes, and in charcoal broiled hamburgers and burnt toast.

The molecules, pervasive in galaxies like our own Milky Way, play a significant role in star and planet formation. Spitzer is the first telescope to see these molecules so far back in time.

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full story at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-123

link to a preprint of the refereed journal article (PDF): http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0504336

is a helluva Attorney General. He can find all kinds of things! New Yorkers should be very thankful!

:thumbsup:

our own. ;)

Now if he could just find us a handful of decent Democrats to run for office we would be eternally in his debt.

that's some pretty shitty science reporting.

Neat find though.

That drawing is pretty bad -- it makes it look like there are giant macroscopic PAHs floating around somewhere. But I'm not too upset over PAHs being described as the "building blocks of life." That's such a vague term, it's hard to argue with it.

Would be cool if they found amino acids, though.

Actual space filling models of the real things.

But how are PAH's building blocks of life?

Someone in the lounge thread said something about them being green, but there's nothing green about the molecules. So the artistry is misleading in that sense. And I don't know why they have them in that spiral pattern.

I know that PAHs aren't "building blocks" the way amino acids are, but for interstellar/intergalactic chemistry, organic molecules of any kind are about as close as one gets to building blocks.

There is an interesting debate going on about whether interstellar glycine has been detected, but that's about it.

about chemistry. The atoms have to have some color, usually the carbon atoms will be black and the hydrogen atoms will be white, but that's not important. The structures are correct.

What's misleading is that they're calling this the stuff of "life" and "building blocks of life," which is nonsense.

Now glycine, glycine would be the building blocks of life.

it's a press release from JPL.