Scientists on Friday identified two complex organic molecules, or building blocks of life, on a comet for the first time, shedding new light on the cosmic origins of planets like Earth.
The aptly named Comet Lovejoy contains ethanol and the simple sugar glycolaldehyde, researchers report online October 23 in Science Advances. This is the first time these complex organic molecules have been detected on a comet.
Ethanol and glycolaldehyde have been found around young stars where planets are forming. Finding these molecules on a comet — a frozen time capsule from the birth of the solar system -- suggests that they are preserved from the sun's formative years.
"These complex organic molecules may be part of the rocky material from which planets are formed," said the study.
But while the latest study does not end the debate over whether falling comets indeed seeded Earth with the components necessary for life, it does add something to our knowledge, said study co-author Dominique Bockel e-Morvan, an astrophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
"The presence of a major complex organic molecule in comet material is an essential step toward better understanding the conditions that prevailed at the moment when life emerged on our planet," she told Agence France Press.
"These observations show a possible explanation for its (life's) origin on our planet," she added.
Comet Lovejoy is of particular interest to scientists because 'it is one of the most active comets in Earth's orbital neighborhood,' said the study.
It is one of the brightest and most active comets since comet Hale-Bopp in 1997.
Lovejoy passed closest to the sun on January 30, when it was releasing water at the rate of 20 tons per second.
The team observed the atmosphere of the comet around this time when it was brightest and most active.
The research was done using a 30-meter long telescope at the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique in Sierra Nevada, Spain in January 2015, when the comet was brightest and most productive.
"The next step is to see if the organic material being found in comets came from the primordial cloud that formed the solar system or if it was created later on, inside the protoplanetary disk that surrounded the young sun," Dominique Bockelée-Morvan from Paris Observatory, said in a statement.
Image Courtesy: John Vermette/Wikimedia Commons
