Orion Nebula, life-enabling organic molicules.

www.sciencedaily.com...

"ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2010) — ESA's Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. This detailed spectrum -- obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI), one of Herschel's three innovative instruments -- demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space."

I just did a quick search, didn't see this, so I thought I'd share it.
Enjoy.

[edit on 6-3-2010 by Ventessa]

reply to post by Ventessa

Thanks for sharing. Anytime we see clues regarding the possibility of life elsewhere, it's interesting.

Now if we could only find something more definitive, like some signals received by SETI or something, then that would alter the world we live in forever by showing we are truly NOT alone in the universe.

reply to post by Ventessa


This has got to lead to the idea where there is talk about the same building blocks for creating life, these are all around a very large area in space.

I think it's save to say this also happened in the Nebula our Sun is born in.
What means 'Life can be all around us in our own little Neighborhood'.

S & F for You .

I am willing to bet that just about anywhere they point that thing they will find "chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules".

Personally to me it's not a question of weather life or potential for life exists somewhere but more a question of where.

Good find though!
For some reason I have never been to this site. Guess I have some looking around to do.

Thanks.
S+F for you!

This would fit in with the American Scientist Article "Polarized Starlight and the Handedness of Life" , regarding the left handed chirality in amino acids.

Whereas amino acids produced by inorganic reactions are equally split between two mirror-image versions, the amino acids found in living things are almost universally "left-handed." The origin of this biological homochirality, as it is called, has been clouded in mystery, but a group of astronomers may have stumbled on the answer. They found that the light passing through large parts of the cosmos is sometimes circularly polarized in one direction. Such radiation can preferentially destroy one version of the amino acid molecules that form in space along with other complex organic compounds.

www.americanscientist.org...

A pay to get to article thou , a bit more here :

A long-standing puzzle connected with the origin of life on Earth is why all of the amino acids in terrestrial organisms are "left-handed", or laevorotatory. One possible answer is that the choice was made, not on the Earth's surface, but long before the Earth and Sun even formed, by the action of ultraviolet light on interstellar molecules. Support for this view came with the 1995 discovery of excess left-handed amino acids in the Murchison meteorite1 and the 1998 discovery of polarized light in a star-forming region of the Orion Nebula. The existence of circular polarized light (in which the plane of polarization continuously changes) in the Orion gas clouds , by James Hough of the University of Hertfordshire and colleagues, using an instrument attached to the Anglo-Australian Telescope,2 is especially significant. Although the observations were made at infrared wavelengths, the team argues that ultraviolet light in the same region, which is obscured by the clouds, should be polarized as well. Ultraviolet light can force chemical reactions to make molecules of mostly one handedness instead of an even split between the two forms. Right-handed ultraviolet light destroys right-handed molecules, leaving an excess of left-handed ones, and vice versa.

www.daviddarling.info...

[edit on 6-3-2010 by Gun Totin Gerbil]

This doesn't surprise me at all, according to the mainstream books I have read, the basic compounds for life are believed to be quite common in our galaxy/universe.

Every bit of this information that is publicised is a step forward though!

reply to post by Ventessa


We have known these elements exist in space for decades.
Oh well now they have a new toy to detect them better.
It would make sense that the nebula has alot more of this stuff
than empty regions of space.
What I don't get is science calling any of this material ORGANIC.
Can any one help me out with that?