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The legacy of NASA’s Spitzer Telescope lives on. Let us recall that during the first decade of the 21ste century and before its shutdown on January 30, 2020, it was part of NASA’s Large Observatories program which included four large space telescopes launched between 1990 and 2003 and which cover different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spitzer observed in the infrared, Hubble in the visible and near infrared spectrum, the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory dealt with gamma astronomy and finally, Chandra with soft X-ray astronomy.
Launched in 2003, Spitzer has notably made it possible to study the molecular cloud of Perseus (abbreviated as Per MCld for English Perseus molecular cloud) which as its name suggests is a giant molecular cloud located about 600 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. It is a star nursery that it forms from the interstellar medium, which is estimated to contain in this cloud more than 10,000 solar masses in the form of gas and dust.
The Solar System formed from a dust-rich molecular cloud collapsing under its own gravity. This is how the Sun was born, surrounded by a protoplanetary disk. © ECP Group, www.dubigbangauvivant.com, YouTube
Young stars born by the collapse of the Perseus cloud
Found in this cloud of young stars of low masses surrounded by protoplanetary disks that were formed less than a few million years ago by gravitational collapse. They are very luminous in the infrared but the Perseus cloud itself is almost invisible outside this band of wavelengths, unlike the famous molecular cloud of Orion. We can however see in the visible two clusters of stars, IC 348 and NGC 1333. It is all the same with Spitzer that we can see the most things on the Perseus cloud.
It is therefore not surprising that astrophysicists Susan Iglesias-Groth, of theInstitute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), and Martina Marín-Dobrincic, from the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (Spain), have decided to use the archived Spitzer data to make new investigations concerning exobiology with the molecular cloud of Perseus and more precisely the cluster IC 348. This resulted in an article published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and which can be consulted freely at arXiv.
New exploration of Spitzer’s data from the IC348 star-forming region now reveals a large number of organic molecules that may play a role in a prebiotic chemistry that underlies life on a planet like Earth. We can think that the primitive nebula at the origin of our own solar system resembled it and therefore that part of the stages having led to life on our blue planet in its oceans had been crossed in space, before a supply of these biological molecules with the bombardment of comets and asteroids on proto-Earth has occurred.
For exobiology, and to determine to what extent the appearance of life is dependent on a cosmochemical context, it is therefore important to know the distribution and abundance of precursor molecules in the regions where the planets are very probably in the process of to form, like IC348.
Spitzer’s Legacy. To obtain a fairly accurate French translation, click on the white rectangle at the bottom right. The English subtitles should then appear. Then click on the nut to the right of the rectangle, then on “Subtitles” and finally on “Translate automatically”. Choose “French”. © NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The IC348 cluster soon under the eye of the James-Webb
In a press release from theInstitute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, Iglesias-Groth explains that this region is ” an extraordinary organic chemistry laboratory. IC 348 appears to be very rich and diverse in its molecular content. The novelty is that we see the molecules in the diffuse gas from which stars and protoplanetary disks form ».
The same press release also explains that “ new research has detected in the inner part of this region common molecules such as molecular hydrogen (H2), hydroxyl (OH), water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2) and ammonia (NH3) as well as several carbon-carrying molecules that could play an important role in the production of more complex hydrocarbons and prebiotic molecules, such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN), acetylene (C2H2), diacetylene (C4H2), cyanoacetylene (HC3N), and cyanobutadiene (HC5N), ethane (C2H6), l’hexatrine (C6H2) and benzene (C6H6). The data also show the presence of more complex molecules such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and fullerenes C60 etc70 ».
The two astrophysicists do not intend to stop there, in particular because the James-Webb space telescope (JWST) is now in service.
« The spectroscopic capability of the JWST could provide details on the spatial distribution of all these molecules, and extend the current search to other more complex ones, giving higher sensitivity and resolution which are essential to confirm the very probable presence of acids. amines in the gas in this region and in other star-forming regions concludes Iglesias-Groth.
Are we alone in the universe ? You may have already asked yourself the question… We can find answers in films, literature or science fiction comics and our imagination is populated by extraterrestrial creatures! But what does science say about this? The AstrobioEducation site invites you to discover exobiology, an interdisciplinary science which aims to study the origin of life and its research elsewhere in the Universe. Through an educational journey divided into 12 stages, researchers from different disciplines will help you understand how science works to answer the fascinating questions of the origins of life and its research elsewhere than on Earth. © French Society of Exobiology