Stellar Bakeries: Two Suns, One Organic Recipe ⚡ экспресс
Astronomers peered into the 'cradle' of two newborn stars, located 200 astronomical units apart. There they found a veritable 'soup' of complex organic molecules – precursors of life. Remarkably, the chemical makeup of both stars turned out to be almost identical, as if they inherited the same ingredients from the parent cloud. Could this be how the 'recipe for life' gets passed down in star systems?
In the stellar nursery HOPS-288, where three suns are forming, the ALMA telescope revealed two scorching regions around a pair of them. At –170°C, ice on cosmic dust melts, and reactions bubble up in the gas: organic molecules are born — methanol and methyl formate. The latter gives raspberries their aroma; in this cosmic cloud 1,300 light-years away, a familiar berry scent lingers.
Thanks to spectroscopy — scientists identify molecules by their radio signals, much like fingerprints — it was proven that the ‘ingredients’ match. If this is standard in binary systems, the search for life becomes simpler.
🎯 Methyl formate — an ester found in the HOPS-288 cloud — is used on Earth as a raspberry-scented food flavoring.