It is a major discovery for understanding how life appeared on Earth and how it could potentially have developed elsewhere. Thanks to the great sensitivity of the James-Webb space telescope, an international scientific team (including many French people) led by Olivier Berné, CNRS researcher at the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology in Toulouse, has managed to detect, for the whole first time, a molecule suspected of being the cornerstone of organic chemistry.
This chemistry based on the element carbon from which the living, as we know it, emerged. This molecule is very difficult to spot: it is the methyl cation, code name CH3. It has been considered potentially crucial for life since the 1970s-1980s simply because it reacts with a wide range of other molecules to form ever more complex organic compounds, including at low interstellar temperatures.
In addition to its detection, the place where this methyl cation was located is also important. It was discovered around a red dwarf star, within a young star system with a disk of matter where planets are forming, about 1,350 light years from Earth, in the famous nebula of Orion. An environment that is subject to very strong ultraviolet radiation emanating from neighboring massive stars. However, this radiation is generally perceived as destructive since it tends to break molecules. However, the authors of the new study published in the journal Nature believe that it is probably he who allows the formation of this famous methyl cation.
A CH3 which then promotes new chemical reactions resulting in more complex carbon molecules. Moreover, certain meteorites collected on Earth suggest that the protoplanetary disk in which our solar system was formed was also subjected to a large quantity of UV rays. Emissions that must have come from one (or more) massive star neighboring our Sun, which has now disappeared. Indeed, those towering stars that shine intensely also die much faster than the others.
