“Laboratory and theoretical studies have suggested that these molecules are the ‘raw ingredients’ for building molecules that are essential components in biological chemistry on Earth, creating sugars, amino acids and even the components of ribonucleic acid (RNA) under the right conditions.”
“However, many of the environments where we find these complex organic molecules are pretty far removed from where and when we think planets form.
“We wanted to understand more about where exactly, and how much of, these molecules were present in the birthplaces of planets – protoplanetary disks.”
The ‘Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales’ (MAPS) programme was used to collect data from the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile.