Researchers discover how massive young stars create the kind of organic molecules that are necessary for life.

A team of researchers used an airborne observatory to examine the inner regions around two massive young stars. They found water, ammonia and methane.

These molecules are swirling around in a disk of material that surrounds the young stars.

STUDY LEADS TO NEW INSIGHTS

The material is the same stuff that forms planets. The study presents some new insights into how the stuff of life becomes incorporated into planets.

SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) is the telescope that did the work for this study. The team of researchers employed SOFIA to look into the inner regions around two young stars.

The swirling disk shaped clouds held some surprises.

SOFIA WAS KEY IN THE STUDY

The infrared power of SOFIA was key in this study.

When infrared light is split apart with a spectrograph it reveals bright lines. Each of the chemical elements creates a unique line, like a chemical fingerprint. The researchers were able to detect the complex molecules after examining the infrared light from the two young stars with a spectrograph.

LIFE OF A STAR

The life of a star begins in a molecular cloud full of hydrogen molecules and helium atoms. Molecular clouds are cooler and higher density than the interstellar medium, so the inward pressure of gravity can exceed the outward pressure from the cloud.

At the centre of molecular clouds is an infrared dark cloud, a cold dense region, which astronomers think is the precursor to a massive star.

The inward pressure in the cloud takes over, and the infrared dark cloud becomes unstable, and collapses forming a central protostar.

The protostar is surrounded by a rotating disk of dust, like a swirling cocoon. Fusion begins, and in falling material forms a rotating heated disk. The material is heated by the young star and this is called the hot core phase.

INFRARED TELESCOPES ARE DIFFERENT

The stars in this study are 40 times larger the sun. The results can still serve as a reference when the next, most powerful infrared telescope gets to work — The James Webb Space Telescope. SOFIA and the James Webb are both infrared telescopes but they are different from each other.

SOFIA can identify chemical fingerprints around bright stars, and the Webb has the power to do the same around much smaller, dimmer sun-like stars. The results from SOFIA can be used to help understand weaker signals from the James Webb.

BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE

This study shows that important building blocks are created when massive stars heat their surrounding disk material. It also advances another idea which is that the building blocks of life don’t require massive shocks and turbulence for their formation as was previously thought.