Clues of Life's Origins Found In Galactic Cloud

astroengine writes "Finding things like amino acids in space directly is a difficult business. So, instead of finding them directly, a team using West Virginia's Green Bank Telescope, led by Anthony Remijan, discovered two other molecules – cyanomethanimine and ethanamine — both of which are precursor molecules. In other words, these molecules are the early steps in the chain of chemical reactions that go on to make the stuff of life. The researchers found these molecules near the center of the Milky Way inside a hulking interstellar cloud known as Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2), spanning 150 light-years in size, up to 40 times as dense as any other cloud the Milky Way has to offer."

Life

[dreamchaser]

I have a feeling that if we could get out there and explore we'd find at least 'primitive' life is near ubiquitous. The precursors are all around, and given the vastness of the Universe there has got to be plenty of life out there. It is unfortunate that we might never leave our Solar System with meaningful exploratory tools, but I'm still hopeful. We probably won't know in our lifetime though.

Re:Fermi Paradox

[physburn]

May be it takes a very long time to evolve complex life, life was single celled for over a billion years, before multicellar life came about, may be that step is even rarer than we throught and earth just got lucky.

Re:Life

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a misrepresentation in your post. It is true that Voyager 1 is 17 light hours away and it has taken 35 years, yes, but that's not the point of Voyager 1. The mission of Voyager 1 wasn't to see how far it could get in 35 years. If we needed to get a craft 17 light hours from Earth in the fastest time possible it certainly wouldn't take 35 years, even with 1960s technology.

Re:FTL

[morgauxo]

Man I hate that argument. You are saying if we can't even figure out how not to harm the Earth's environment we can't or shouldn't be working on how to create a good environment in space right?

That is so backwards! We learn by doing the smaller things first, then the large ones. What do you think is more complicated, the environment of a complete planet or the space within a spaceship? Maybe by figuring out how to live on the space ship we will actually learn something we can apply to managing our resources back on Earth! For example... I bet people will develop some really good waste processing technology when they are reliant on it directly for drinking water!

At the very least, any steps we take in space are not likely to harm any existing liveable natural environment unlike pretty much everything we do on Earth. If anything environmentalists should want us OFF the planet, not on it! Some people seem to be more concerned about poluting our dead moon than they are our living planet! WTF are people smoking?