For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of complex organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in a protoplanetary disc surrounding a young star.
The discovery, made with the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA), reaffirms that the conditions that spawned the Earth and Sun are not unique in the universe, researchers said.
The new ALMA observations show that the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star MWC 480 contains large amounts of methyl cyanide (CH3CN), a complex carbon-based molecule.
There is enough methyl cyanide around MWC 480 to fill all of Earth's oceans.
This molecule and its simpler cousin hydrogen cyanide (HCN) were found in the cold outer reaches of the star's newly formed disc.
"Studies of comets and asteroids show that the solar nebula that spawned the Sun and planets was rich in water and complex organic compounds," said Karin Oberg, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in US, and lead author of the study.
"We now have even better evidence that this same chemistry exists elsewhere in the universe, in regions that could form solar systems not unlike our own," said Oberg.
This is particularly intriguing, Oberg noted, since the molecules found in MWC 480 are also found in similar concentrations in the Solar System's comets.
The star MWC 480, which is about twice the mass of the Sun, is located 455 light-years away in the Taurus star-forming region.
Its surrounding disc is in the very early stages of development - having recently coalesced out of a cold, dark nebula of dust and gas.
Astronomers have known for some time that cold, dark interstellar clouds are very efficient factories for complex organic molecules - including a group of molecules known as cyanides.
Cyanides, and most especially methyl cyanide, are important because they contain carbon-nitrogen bonds, which are essential for the formation of amino acids, the foundation of proteins and the building blocks of life.
Until now, it has remained unclear, however, if these same complex organic molecules commonly form and survive in the energetic environment of a newly forming solar system, where shocks and radiation can easily break chemical bonds.
By exploiting ALMA's remarkable sensitivity astronomers can see from the latest observations that these molecules not only survive, but flourish.
The study was published in the journal Nature.
