Massive Stars Are Factories for Ingredients to Life
NASA’s telescope on an airplane, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, has provided a new glimpse of the chemistry in the inner region surrounding massive young stars where future planets could begin to form. It found massive quantities of water and organic molecules in these swirling, disk-shaped clouds, offering new insights into how some of the key ingredients of life get incorporated into planets during the earliest stages of formation.
A similar process likely happened during the formation of the Sun and the inner rocky planets of our solar system, including Earth. The results are published in the Astrophysical Journal.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/massive-stars-are-factories-for-ingredients-to-life
Illustration of a dusty disc rotating around a massive newborn star that’s about 40 times the size of the Sun. SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, found the inner regions of two of these kinds of discs are filled with organic molecules that are important for life as we know it. These include water, ammonia, methane, and acetylene — which is a chemical building block to larger and more complex organic molecules — illustrated in the call out.
Credits: NASA / Ames Research Center / Daniel Rutter
