"Methanol has long been considered a basic building block of life as we know it: the molecule plays a crucial role in producing the proteins and amino acids that make up DNA and RNA, upon which all known life is based. Its discovery in other parts of the solar system - and even planet-forming discs around distant stars - has therefore been met with immense excitement by the scientific community."
"As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center astrochemist Martin Cordiner and his colleagues used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to scan the object, finding not just traces but significant amounts of both gaseous methanol and hydrogen cyanide, which is also considered an important precursor for the formation of life. The sheer concentration of the gases caught them off guard on the interstellar visitor, which is widely believed to be a type of comet."
"Considering methanol's important role in the production of key molecules that are essential for the formation of life, it's an intriguing finding. The findings also suggest that other important types of chemical reactions could be taking place as well. "It seems really chemically implausible that you could go on a path to very high chemical complexity without producing methanol," Cordiner told New Scientist."
ALMA observations detected substantial gaseous methanol and hydrogen cyanide associated with interstellar object 3I/ATLAS. Methanol functions as a basic building block in producing proteins and amino acids central to DNA and RNA. The concentrations of these molecules on 3I/ATLAS are notably higher than typical abundances in Solar System comets. The gases appear to originate from the object's rocky core. The presence of abundant methanol and hydrogen cyanide implies pathways toward greater chemical complexity and the potential for other reactive prebiotic chemistry on or within the object.
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