 |
Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
|
 |
Precursor To Life Found In Space Cloud
Astronomers have found tentative traces of a precursor chemical to the building blocks of life near a star-forming region about 1,000 light-years from Earth.
The signal from the molecule, hydroxylamine, which is made up of atoms of nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, still needs to be verified. But, if confirmed, it would mean scientists had found a chemical that could potentially seed life on other worlds, and may have played a role in life's origin on our home planet 3.7 billion years ago.
Some astronomers think that the ingredients for life are formed in cold, gas-, dust- and plasma-filled interstellar clouds. Comets, asteroids and meteors forming in these clouds bear such chemicals, and as they continually bombard planets, they could have deposited the chemicals on Earth or other worlds, said Anthony Remijan, an astrochemist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va., who led the research effort.
To test this theory, astronomers look for the chemical fingerprints of simple, inorganic compounds forming in interstellar clouds. These compounds aren't life or even carbon-based, but they can react with other molecules to form some of the building blocks of life, such as amino acids or the nucleotides that make up DNA...
In the hunt for these molecules, Remijan and colleagues scanned a star-forming region of the Milky Way called L1157-B1 using the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA).
They found a very weak signal of hydroxylamine, which makes sense since, inside L1157-B1, a violent gas jet is slamming into the interstellar medium; the shock from this gas outflow would be sufficient force to trigger these chemical reactions in the otherwise frigid depths of an interstellar cloud. The result: hydroxylamine. In turn, hydroxylamine could react with other compounds, such as acetic acid, to form amino acids that could be dumped onto other worlds during space-rock collisions.
In his 1957 book The Black Cloud, astronomer and sf author Fred Hoyle discusses the possibility of an intelligent, living cloud in space. Not to sensationalize this story, but here's one of the covers of Hoyle's novel; the 1959 paperback edition.

(Earth menaced by a power beyond the planets and older than time!)
And here's a quote from the cloud:
[I]t is most unusual to find animals with technical skills inhabiting planets, which are in the nature of extreme outposts of life... Living on the surface of a solid body, you are exposed to a strong gravitational force. This greatly limits the size to which your animals can grow and hence limits the scope of your neurological activity. It forces you to possess muscular structures to promote movements, and ... to carry protective armour ...
[Y]our very largest animals have been mostly bone and muscle with very little brain... By and large, one only expects intelligent life to exist in a diffuse gaseous medium... The second unfavourable factor is your extreme lack of basic chemical foods. For the building of chemical foods on a large scale starlight is necessary. Your planet, however, absorbs only a very minute fraction of the light from the Sun. At the moment, I myself am building basic chemicals at about 10,000,000,000 times the rate at which building is occurring on the whole ... surface of your planet.
From Space.com.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/14/2013)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.
| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 1 )
Related News Stories -
("
Space Tech
")
Is China Mining Helium-3 On The Moon's Farside?
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.' -
Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space
'...the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool?' - Frank K. Kelly, 1935.
Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...' - Murray Leinster, 1953.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
|
 |
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
LLM 'Cognitive Core' Now Evolving
'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
Has Elon Musk Given Up On Mars?
'There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.'
Bacteria Turns Plastic Into Pain Relief? That Gives Me An Idea.
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
When Your Child's Best Friend Is An AI
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
China's Drone Mothership Can Carry 100 Drones
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
Drones Recharge In Mid-Air Like Jets Refuel!
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
Australian Authors Reject AI Training Of Llama
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
Is China Mining Helium-3 On The Moon's Farside?
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
Maybe It's Too Soon To Require Autonomous Mode
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
Is Agentic AI The Wrong Kind Of Smartness?
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
Heat Waver - The First Ever Combo Solar Collector And Wind Turbine
'...like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
Tesla 'Fleet Response Agents' Bolster FSD Autonomy
'You hate the whole idea that some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre has got your life... in his hands.'
Mori3 Autonomous Shapeshifting Robot
'My homeland is being threatened by the Replicators. Thus far all attempts to stop them have failed.'
Tesla Seeks 'Tesla Robotaxi' And 'Robobus' Trademarks Ignoring Prior Art
'A robobus had just rolled up to the curb.'
Scary Grid Safety Robots
'The ultimate horror for our paranoid culture...'
Does AI Provide A Way Forward For Talk Therapy
'And there in the next room by the sofa sat a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile.'
More SF in the News Stories
More Beyond Technovelgy science news stories
|
 |