LIFE’S building blocks appear to lurk in every corner of the galaxy. Organic compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were known to be abundant in space, but they have more in common with the key molecules of life on Earth than had been thought.
Douglas Hudgins and colleagues at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, studied infrared readings from the Spitzer Space Telescope for fingerprints of PAHs and found that most contain nitrogen (The Astrophysical Journal, vol 632, p 316).
Such nitrogen-containing compounds are also found in chlorophyll, DNA and haemoglobin, increasing the chances of life…
