What do margaritas, vinegar, and ant stings have in common? They contain chemical ingredients that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has identified surrounding two young protostars often known as IRAS 2A and IRAS 23385. Although planets will not be yet forming around those stars, these and other molecules detected there by Webb represent key ingredients for making potentially habitable worlds.
A world team of astronomers used Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) to discover a wide range of icy compounds made up of complex organic molecules like ethanol (alcohol) and sure acetic acid (an ingredient in vinegar). This work builds on previous Webb detections of diverse ices in a chilly, dark molecular cloud.
What’s the origin of complex organic molecules (COMs) ?
“This finding contributes to considered one of the long-standing questions in astrochemistry,” said team leader Will Rocha of Leiden University within the Netherlands. “What’s the origin of complex organic molecules, or COMs, in space? Are they made within the gas phase or in ices? The detection of COMs in ices suggests that solid-phase chemical reactions on the surfaces of cold dust grains can construct complex sorts of molecules.”
As several COMs, including those detected within the solid phase on this research, were previously detected in the nice and cozy gas phase, it’s now believed that they originate from the sublimation of ices. Sublimation is to vary directly from a solid to a gas without becoming a liquid. Due to this fact, detecting COMs in ices makes astronomers hopeful about improved understanding of the origins of other, even larger molecules in space.
Scientists are also keen to explore to what extent these COMs are transported to planets at much later stages of protostellar evolution. COMs in cold ices are regarded as easier to move from molecular clouds to planet-forming disks than warm, gaseous molecules. These icy COMs can due to this fact be incorporated into comets and asteroids, which in turn may collide with forming planets, delivering the ingredients for all times to possibly flourish.
The science team also detected simpler molecules, including formic acid (which causes the burning sensation of an ant sting), methane, formaldehyde, and sulfur dioxide. Research suggests that sulfur-containing compounds like sulfur dioxide played a vital role in driving metabolic reactions on the primitive Earth.
Just like the early stages of our own solar system?
Of particular interest is that considered one of the sources investigated, IRAS 2A, is characterised as a low-mass protostar. IRAS 2A may due to this fact be much like the early stages of our own solar system. As such, the chemicals identified around this protostar were likely present in the primary stages of development of our solar system and later delivered to the primitive Earth.
“All of those molecules can turn out to be a part of comets and asteroids and eventually latest planetary systems when the icy material is transported inward to the planet-forming disk because the protostellar system evolves,” said Ewine van Dishoeck of Leiden University, considered one of the coordinators of the science program. “We stay up for following this astrochemical trail step-by-step with more Webb data in the approaching years.”
These observations were made for the JOYS+ (James Webb Observations of Young ProtoStars) program. The team dedicated these results to team member Harold Linnartz, who unexpectedly passed away in December 2023, shortly after the acceptance of this paper.
This research has been accepted for publication within the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
