Theoretical origin of life; molecules made near heat (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, May 10, 2015, 23:58 (3488 days ago) @ David Turell

Again, fun and games in the lab setting up conditions that might have occurred near a hot star and formed carbon/nitrogen ring molecules as a start toward RNA/DNA, with lots more processing needed:-"Now, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) and the University of Hawaii at Manoa have shown for the first time that cosmic hot spots, such as those near stars, could be excellent environments for the creation of these nitrogen-containing molecular rings.-"In a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal, the team describes the experiment in which they recreate conditions around carbon-rich, dying stars to find formation pathways of the important molecules.-"'This is the first time anyone's looked at a hot reaction like this," says Musahid Ahmed, scientist in the Chemical Sciences Division at Berkeley Lab. It's not easy for carbon atoms to form rings that contain nitrogen, he says. But this new work demonstrates the possibility of a hot gas phase reaction, what Ahmed calls the "cosmic barbeque-"These experiments provide compelling evidence that the key molecules of quinolone and isoquinoline can be synthesized in these hot environments and then be ejected with the stellar wind to the interstellar medium - the space between stars, says Kaiser.-"'Once ejected in space, in cold molecular clouds, these molecules can then condense on cold interstellar nanoparticles, where they can be processed and functionalized." Kaiser adds. "These processes might lead to more complex, biorelevant molecules such as nucleobases of crucial importance to DNA and RNA formation.'"-
 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-hot-life-chemical-bonds-eventually.html#jCp-And they neatly forgot to mention they all have to be right-handed!