When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.An infrared view of part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud, within which the bright, cold pre-stellar cloud L1544 can be seen at the lower left. | Credit: ESA/Herschel/SPIREAstronomers recently searched the gas cloud of a yet-unborn star for a chemical that may seed future planets with the basic ingredients for life.Astronomer Yuxin Lin and colleagues found an organic molecule called methanimine scattered throughout a dense clump of gas and dust 554 light-years away. The cloud, called L1544 and found within the Taurus Molecular Cloud, will eventually become a star with a system of planets, and if Lin and colleagues are right, those exoplanets may form with a “starter kit” of organic molecules like methanimine — courtesy of chemical reactions that are going on right now in the cold, dormant molecular cloud.AdvertisementAdvertisementAstronomers have spotted methanimine in a surprising range of places in the universe, from very hot and turbulent places like the cores of newborn stars to frigid grains of ice drifting through interstellar space. One of the most interesting places methanimine has turned up is what astronomers call a pre-stellar core: a dense knot of gas and dust, poised on the brink of collapsing under its own gravity to form a newborn star. Think of a pre-stellar core — like L1544, located 554 light years away — as all the ingredients for a star system, with some assembly required.Organic chemistry starter kitMethanimine (CH2NH2), not to be confused with anything featured on “Breaking Bad,” is a fairly simple molecule, as organic chemistry goes. It sits about halfway along the chain of chemical reactions that lie between a handful of stray atoms and an amino acid (one of the much larger organic molecules that combine to form proteins). …
