An international research team has discovered methanol in a protoplanetary disk. The gas was found in the warmer part of the disk, which means it cannot have formed there and must have come from the surrounding cold gas clouds that gave birth to the star and the disk. This work was published in Nature Astronomy and shows that methanol has to be inherited and not created; a process that, if common, may give life in other systems a head start.

Per the press release: Methanol, CH3OH, is one of the simplest complex molecules. It is considered by astronomers to be a precursor for the pre-biotic chemistry essential for life because it can be used to form, for example, amino acids and proteins.

And lead author Alice Booth explains: This is a very exciting and surprising result. Whilst warm methanol has been detected in the warm, young disks, because of the nature of this disk this is the first clear observational evidence that complex organic molecules can be ‘inherited’ from the earlier cold dark clouds phase.

The team’s next goal is to gather more data and possibly find even more complex oxygen-bearing molecules in their search for more pre-biotic chemistry. We’ll keep you updated here on the Daily Space as those results are reported.

More Information

NOVA press release

“An inherited complex organic molecule reservoir in a warm planet-hosting disk,” Alice S. Booth et al., 2021 May 10, Nature Astronomy (preprint on arxiv.org)