The building blocks of life can form rapidly around young stars

Scientists have long queried how the complex molecules needed for life could have formed around the tumultuous and violent environment of the sun in its youth.

A family of meteorites called "chondrites" is theorized to have delivered the right stuff for life to Earth. But the question is, how did complex organic molecules containing elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen come to be sealed in these meteorites in the first place?

New research suggests that the "hot spot" for the formation of these macromolecules, the essential building blocks of life, may be so-called "dust traps" in swirling disks of matter around infant stars. Here, intense starlight from the central young star could irradiate the accumulating ice and dust to form carbon-containing macromolecules in just decades, which is relatively rapid.

This would mean the macromolecules could already be present when larger planetesimals form planets, or they could be sealed in asteroids in the form of small pebbles. These asteroids could have then be broken down by repeated collisions in space, creating smaller bodies. Some of these could have arrived at Earth in the form of meteorites.

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"It is incredible to discover a new crucial role of dust traps in the formation of macromolecular matter that planets may need for hosting life," team member Paola Pinilla of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London told Space.com. "Dust traps are beneficial regions for dust particles to grow to pebbles and planetesimals, which are the building blocks of planets."
Pinilla explained that in these regions, very small particles can be continuously recreated and replenished by ongoing destructive collisions. These tiny micron-sized grains can easily be lifted to the upper layers of the flattened cloud of star-forming material that surrounds an infant star, called a protoplanetary disk.

Once here, Pinilla said these particles can receive the right amount of irradiation from their infant star to efficiently convert these tiny icy particles into complex macromolecular matter.