Stellar nurseries carry the stuff of life, long before stars
Organic compounds in nearby protostellar clouds point to star-planet evolution.
This mosaic of the Taurus Molecular Cloud is made from observations of nearby pre-stellar clouds, located 450 light-years from Earth. Young stars like HL Tauri — about 3 million years old — call these stellar nurseries home. But before the emergence of proper stars, all we have are massive regions of raw gas —
with lifespans of less than a million years. Driven by processes like turbulence and gravitational forces, the gas and dust in the molecular cloud collapses to form filaments, and it is within those filaments that the denser cores form.
Gravity and turbulence behave like cosmic thumbs and index fingers, weaving an intricate network of filaments, teeming with bright clumps: the seeds of future stars. The bright clumps of molecular threads — as long as 1,000 solar systems lined next to each other — are rich in molecules made out of elements that life requires: C, O, & H.
“The basic organic chemistry needed for life is present in the raw gas prior to the formation of stars and planets”
— Yancy Shirley
