Astronomers have made an exciting discovery that could help explain how life began—not just on Earth, but potentially on planets far beyond our solar system.
For the first time, they’ve found rare forms of methanol, a simple type of alcohol, in a disk of gas and dust where planets are forming.
This rare methanol could be one of the key ingredients needed to kick-start life.
The discovery was made in a young star system called HD 100453, located about 330 light-years from Earth.
The star is about 1.6 times the mass of our Sun and is surrounded by a planet-forming disk, similar to the one that once surrounded our own Sun before the planets formed.
Researchers used the powerful ALMA telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert to detect the methanol molecules.
What makes this find special is that the team didn’t just find regular methanol—they found rare isotopes of it.
Isotopes are versions of a molecule that have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons.
These rare forms of methanol are much harder to detect because they are 10 to 100 times less common.
Their discovery gives scientists a deeper look at the kinds of organic molecules present in the early stages of planet formation.
Alice Booth, who led the study from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian, said this discovery helps us understand the history of the chemical ingredients needed for life.
Because HD 100453 is a more massive and warmer star than the Sun, the methanol in its disk exists in gas form farther out from the star, making it easier to detect with ALMA. In cooler disks like the one around the Sun, methanol tends to stay frozen in ice, which makes it invisible to current telescopes.
Interestingly, the amount of methanol compared to other simple organic molecules in this disk is similar to what scientists see in comets in our solar system.
This suggests that the icy material that forms comets is rich in organic molecules, and that these comets may have delivered important building blocks for life to planets—including Earth.
Lisa Wölfer from MIT, a co-author of the study, joked that the system’s “vintage” of over a million years is a good one, as this is the age of the star and its disk. Another co-author, Milou Temmink from Leiden Observatory, added that this work supports the idea that comets may have played a crucial role in bringing the raw ingredients for life to Earth.
In the future, scientists hope to detect even more complex molecules—like amino acids and sugars—in these young systems. For now, this rare methanol is a major step forward in understanding how life-friendly chemistry begins in space.
Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
