James Webb Space Telescope finds the building blocks of life in a molecular cloud 500 light-years from Earth

The James Webb Space Telescope has arrived to completely change the view we have of the deepest places in the universe. It’s not just about remoteness, but also dark spots in nearby regions that are now getting a clearer picture due to the range of the tools placed on the observatory of the NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency.

Thanks to its wonderful power of infrared detection, scientists from the University of Bern, in Germany, analyzed data obtained by James Webb in which the basic elements for life are found, accumulated in a molecular cloud.

The first impressive achievement for the space telescope is to be able to detail the elements found in a molecular cloud.

Other advanced instruments, such as Hubble for example, have the barrier that the light that touches these regions distorts the components that may be passing through that area.

What items were found with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope?

Frozen carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur, are part of the elements found within the molecular cloud. This intergalactic entity is called Chamaeleon I and is between 500 and 630 light years distant from Earth.

The detected elements, if they are separated, can mean anything within the wide spectrum that covers space. But together they suggest that at any time they combine to form atmospheres, the portal reported. sports.

“These elements are important components of prebiotic molecules, like individual amino acids, and therefore the ingredients of life, so to speak,” said astronomer Maria Drozdovskaya, part of the Bern science team.

Is it the basis of planet formation? No, it goes further

Another team of scientists, led by Melissa McClure, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, finds frozen elements of molecules such as water, methane, ammonia, carbonyl sulfide, and methanol organic molecule.

What does this mean? That these regions are the favorite site for the birth of massive stars and later the worlds that surround them.

“Many star and planetary systems that develop in this particular cloud will inherit molecules in a fairly advanced chemical state. This could mean that the presence of prebiotic molecules in planetary systems is a common result of star formation rather than a unique feature of our own solar system,” said one of the Leiden representatives.