American scientists have discovered that cosmic hotspots near dying stars are prime locations for forming molecular precursors to DNA.
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) and the University of Hawaii at Manoa have shown for the first time that cosmic hot spots, such as those near stars, could be excellent environments for the creation of these nitrogen-containing molecular rings.
The team described the experiment in which they recreate conditions around carbon-rich, dying stars to find formation pathways of the important molecules.
Scientist Musahid Ahmed said that this is the first time anyone's looked at a hot reaction like this, adding that it's not easy for carbon atoms to form rings that contain nitrogen, but this new work demonstrates the possibility of a hot gas phase reaction, the "cosmic barbeque."
For decades, astronomers have pointed their telescopes into space to look for signatures of these nitrogen-containing double carbon rings called quinoline, Ahmed explains. They've focused mostly on the space between stars called the interstellar medium. While the stellar environment has been deemed a likely candidate for the formation of carbon ring structures, no one had spent much time looking there for nitrogen-containing carbon rings.
There's an energy barrier for this reaction to take place, and you can exceed that barrier near a star or in our experimental setup, Ahmed says, adding that this suggests that they can start looking for these molecules around stars now.
These experiments provide compelling evidence that the key molecules of quinoline and isoquinoline can be synthesized in these hot environments and then be ejected with the stellar wind to the interstellar medium, the space between stars, says Kaiser.
The study appears in the Astrophysical Journal.