James' World 2

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The powerful eye of the James Webb Space Telescope has spotted vital chemicals around two youthful stars.

Astronomers focused the space observatory, which orbits 1 million miles from Earth, on cosmic regions around these protostars, which are so youthful they haven’t yet formed planets. But they almost certainly will: NASA suspects nearly every star has at least one planet.

And in these planet-forming regions, the Webb telescope found “complex organic molecules,” including ethanol (the alcohol found in alcoholic beverages) as well as another ingredient found in vinegar. Crucially, these ingredients, which form into icy materials in frigid space, might one day become part of future solar system objects, including the large space rocks that can carry organic molecules and important materials to planets. (Much of Earth’s water, for example, may have come from asteroid impacts.)

“All of these molecules can become part of comets and asteroids and eventually new planetary systems when the icy material is transported inward to the planet-forming disk as the protostellar system evolves,” Ewine van Dishoeck, an astronomer at Leiden University and an author of the new research, said in a NASA statement. “We look forward to following this astrochemical trail step-by-step with more Webb data in the coming years.”

The Webb telescope carries instruments, called spectrometers, that can detect the composition of distant objects or places, like the atmospheres of alien planets. Spectrometers separate the light coming from these objects, similar to a prism. Different elements or molecules absorb different types of light, so the light viewed by Webb can discern what chemicals are there, and which aren’t.

The first graphic below shows the different light spectrums Webb picked up while scanning the distant protostar IRAS 2A. Ethanol was present in different groups of icy materials.

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