Scientists were excited to find these and other complex molecules in the comet’s emissions.
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Ethyl alcohol, the same found in alcoholic beverages, and glycoaldehyde, a simple sugar, were found, according to the study, making this the first time that these complex organic compounds were observed in a comet.
Comet Lovejoy might be pretty tipsy.
Alcohol and sugar were just two of the 21 organic molecules the team found in Lovejoy.
Using the 100-foot telescope of the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), located on Pico Veleta in the Sierra Nevada, Spain, Dr Biver and his colleagues observed Lovejoy’s atmosphere between 13 and 26 January 2015, when the comet was the brightest and the most productive, at a distance of 0.6 AU from Earth and of 1.3 AU from the Sunday. Sunlight causes the different molecules in the comet’s atmosphere to glow at specific frequencies, allowing scientists to identify the different substances present. At its peak it was the brightest and most active comet since Hale-Bopp in 1997, but it has since moved away from Earth and faded from view. Scientists then train telescopes onto the gas to determine what the comet is made up of. Instead, life had something that was much more sophisticated on a molecular level. We’re finding molecules with multiple carbon atoms.
ESA said that a few of the carbon and nitrogen-rich organic compounds detected by Philae play an important role in creating a few of the building blocks of life such amino acids, nucleobases, and sugars.
Comets are essentially giant balls of ice and dust hurtling through the cosmos, often trailing behind them a tail made of gas and dust. Solar systems are born when shock waves from stellar winds and other nearby supernovae compress and concentrate a cloud of ejected stellar material until dense clumps of that cloud begin to collapse under their own gravity, forming a new generation of stars and planets.
These clouds contain countless dust grains.
The only problem with that idea is confirming exactly when these comets started carrying organic molecules.
Nicolas Biver from the Paris Observatory in France is the lead author of the paper that explains the comet in its details.
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