Life in the universe might be more prevalent than we thought.
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Arecibo telescope finds critical ingredients for the soup of life in a
galaxy far, far away
AUSTIN, Texas Astronomers from Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in
Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have detected for the first time the molecules
methanimine and hydrogen cyanide two ingredients that build
life-forming amino acids in a galaxy some 250 million light years away.
³Just add water!² said Robert Minchin, an Arecibo astronomer on the
project, who explained that methanimine and hydrogen cyanide are two of
the basic ingredients of life, because when combined with water they
form glycine, the simplest amino acid, a building block of life on Earth.
The astronomy team, led by Arecibo astronomer Christopher Salter,
announced this discovery today (Jan. 11) in a poster presented at the
American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin. The Arecibo Observatory
is managed by Cornell University for National Science Foundation.
The Arecibo astronomers focused on the distant galaxy Arp 220, an
ultra-luminous starburst galaxy, because it forms new stars at a very
high rate. They used the 305-meter, or 1,000-foot diameter, Arecibo
radio telescope, the worldıs largest and most sensitive, to observe the
galaxy at different frequencies. In fact, for the first time in April
2007, they used the 800 megahertz wide-band mode of the main
spectrometer to make these detections.
These molecules were found by searching for radio emission at specific
frequencies. Each chemical substance has its own unique radio frequency
and astronomers can in that way identify the different substances, much
like people can be identified with their unique fingerprints.
³We werenıt targeting any particular molecule, so we didnıt know what we
were going to find we just started searching, and what we found was
incredibly exciting,² said Tapasi Ghosh, an Arecibo astronomer.
³The fact that we can observe these substances at such a vast distance
means that there are huge amounts of them in Arp 220,² said Emmanuel
Momjian, a former Arecibo astronomer, now at the National Radio
Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, N.M. ³It is indeed very intriguing to
find that the ingredients of life appear in large quantities where new
stars and planets are born.²
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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/cuc-atf011408.php
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John #1782
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