Scientists have discovered a vast, previously unknown reservoir of new aromatic material in a cold, dark molecular cloud. Aromatic molecules exist in the chemical makeup of human beings and other animals.
Within 100,000 years of the Big Bang, the very first molecule emerged, an improbable marriage of helium and hydrogen known as a helium hydride ion, or HeH+. It was the beginning of chemistry.
A new study by an international team of astronomers has discovered the presence of organic molecules in the disk of a young star V883 Ori, located about 1300 light-years away from the Earth.
Astronomers using ALMA, have found the fingerprints of sodium chloride – table salt – in a ring of dusty debris around a massive young star 1,500 light years away that formed in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.
