Astronomers discover complex organic matter in the universe

Fascinating. If stars are regularly dumping complex organic molecules into their surrounding systems, it would seem the odds of life developing on their companions are far better than we thought! Looking forward to future research on this.

I'm almost convinced there is a 'nature' to life forming much like there is a 'nature' to planets forming. It's hidden in the quantum phenomena that we are yet to fully understand.

<3 speculation

The team's discovery suggests that complex organic compounds can be synthesized in space even when no life forms are present.
Or - the Universe itself, is a living thing, with these organic compounds being detritus akin to leaves... or dead skin... or even just plain old decomposed "life".

Let's see...we have entire moons made of complex organics, yet some scientists still haven't gotten the message?
Can scientists really be this stupid?
Apparently, some are.
Especially, if they are being paid to support the current paradigm.
Oil is abiotic. Time to stop lying to protect the market share of big oil, and their twisted brothers in the "green' movement.

Let's see...we have entire moons made of complex organics, yet some scientists still haven't gotten the message?
Can scientists really be this stupid?
Apparently, some are.
Especially, if they are being paid to support the current paradigm.
Oil is abiotic. Time to stop lying to protect the market share of big oil, and their twisted brothers in the "green' movement.

WOW! Are you serious? You just gave a whole new meaning to non sequitur. bravo!

This is a pretty significant 'theoretical impossibility' that is occurring in nature. "Whether these delivered organic compounds played any role in the development of life on Earth remains an open question." I'm going to speculate that they played a huge role in the formation of life on Earth. Supernova = known periodic table = organic compounds on Earth = Biology. remove one variable and the chances may increase? way over simplified, but when more research is done by smarter folk than I, they'll prove it plays a role in life all over the universe. But, bravo - brilliant discovery.

It is probably just a matter of time before truth is stranger than fiction re-occurs. I recall a few Star Trek episodes in which lifeforms inhabited interstellar space...and if these organic compounds can coalesce and evolve...yes in a vacuum too, then truth may be stanger than fiction.

Forget interstellar space. If these compounds are formed in stars, why not life there too? I'm not just talking about cool brown dwarfs where liquid water may be possible. There is no reason I can see why life as we don't know it could evolve at higher temperatures. Probably chemical life requires temperatures below say 600 K, but that certainly opens up a lot of new territory.

On the subject of abiotic oil. Coal is clearly formed from organic debris from living creatures. Most oil on Earth is probably formed the same way. But "deep" oil and gas may be different. Organic matter that was part of the raw material the Earth was formed from, that has differentiated from the core, but is still trapped under the lithosphere. There is no reason to suspect that deep methane ever saw the inside of a cow. ;-)

Hypothesis: The universe is full of organic matter because the Big Bang was God blowing himself to Smithereens. That makes us microorganisms festering on the Carcass.

the Big Bang was God blowing himself to Smithereens.
Pipet,
That is a concept detailed in "God's Debris" by Dilbert creator Scott Adams from 2001 - NOT your Hypothesis.

However, in a twisted, cynical sort of way it is a philosophically appropriate analogy/metaphor.

Analogy. We go out to the Black Hills in South Dakota, and stand on a hillside, looking at the wildlife vista of the hillsides, with grass, bushes, and evergreens. Still, beautiful. We take a picture, and look for life. We probably will not see anything... there are no deer visible, and if there are any squirrels or rodents, our camera isn't able to zoom in without lens. Putting them on, we take another picture. All this takes so long that now it's dark, so we decide to use our night vision camera, in case we missed something. With all these improvements we finally spot an animal! We recognize the shape of a deer, even though it blends with the background. If we didn't know what we were looking for, we might have missed it (as in, different forms of life are not in our database). Our first look at space should be viewed much the same way. In our photos we have no idea that the hillside is crawling with insects and bacteria. Obviously, life is everywhere.

Awesome. I believe that the density of life that we see on our planet is mirrored in overall density of life in the universe. A sort of biological fractal hypothesis. Of course the real issue may be our own definition of life. Plasma crystals in saturns rings? the sheer size of the universe suggests that we would be foolish to casually dismiss the possibility of other lifeforms.

I don't know exactly what sorts of quantities of these complex organic compounds are being observed, but I have to wonder if our original understanding of where they come from isn't still correct. I mean, we're just starting to get the hang of spotting planets around other stars. We're still pretty lousy at determining whether or not those planets might harbor life. So what if, as many scientists have speculated, life is far more common in the Universe than we could even guess? Has anyone ever worked up a model of the hypothetical chemical spectrum of *our* star going nova? I know it's the wrong type of star to get up to such shenanigans, but for the sake of hypothesis... if our star blew out and tore apart the closest handful of planets in the blast, what might the spectrum look like with shreds of a world as packed full of life as Earth mixed in with all the usual dust and gas? I wonder if it would look at all like some of what is being observed in other novas and galaxies. Hmm...

dtguay

If stars are regularly dumping complex organic molecules

mlange

Supernova = known periodic table = organic compounds on Earth = Biology.

I think you guys might have missed this line:

spectra of star dust formed in exploding stars called novae

Nova does not equal either supernova or stars. The key here is the carbon. Carbon is not produced in normal stars nor is much produced in a supernova itself. Carbon is produced by non-sequence stars. That is stars at the end of their life that have not yet gone BOOOM. The novae and supernovae simply distribute the carbon into interstellar space.

Considering the violence of supernovae they may destroy any complex hydrocarbons. Novae and planetary nebulae may be the main source. I think the latter is the least destructive way to get carbon into interstellar space. It should destroy less hydrocarbons that may have formed in the outer envelopes of non-main-sequence stars.

Ethelred

Plasma crystals

????

Does that not seem just a tad self contradictory? Plasma being kind of the opposite of crystals.

Ethelred

@eachus,

There's no such thing as "abiotic oil"; if there were, the oil companies would be the first to trumpet its existence. All known oil -- even the deepest -- is associated with subduction of oceanic plates under the continental plates. Oceanic plates are like conveyor belts, slowly accumulating organics-rich sediment from the ocean above until they dive under the continent. There, the sediment gets cooked, and all the organics within it converted to oil and gas, which then bubble up toward the surface. That's why all the big oil and gas fields are found along modern or ancient continental shelves, or in places where several proto-continents collided to form today's super-continents (like, the Middle East), and the like.

Fossil fuel exploration companies vitally rely on this bio-geological understanding when prospecting for oil and gas; if it were not for this helpful heuristic, they'd routinely wind up drilling too many dry wells, and bankrupting themselves in the process.

Personally i belive that not only is life a common phenonomem ( hate spelling at times), but the basic forms of life is more varied thn we realise even now. One more reason i wish we could explore the universe as easilly as Star Trek shows as i would love to see such lifeforms such as say a ( to use a really far out example ) Mercury based lifeform rather than a Carbon one.

"Since coal and oil are remnants of ancient life, this type of organic matter was thought to arise only from living organisms."

-As we are finding complex organics and hydrocarbons throughout space, why wouldn't we expect to find them here?
http://www.esa.in...x_0.html

I see wiki has a decidedly negative (and a little suspicious) article on the subject:

http://en.wikiped...m_origin

"Abiogenic petroleum origin is a largely abandoned hypothesis that was proposed as an alternative to theory of biological petroleum origin."

Wiki flagged it and refers you to the talk page.
http://en.wikiped...m_origin

-Obviously lots of controversy and far from settled.

The team's discovery suggests that complex organic compounds can be synthesized in space even when no life forms are present.
Or - the Universe itself, is a living thing, with these organic compounds being detritus akin to leaves... or dead skin... or even just plain old decomposed "life".

The ultimate sci-fi novel???? I love it!!!!!

Interesting. I don't know if it adds anything to the conversation, but during geomagnetic storms is when some prospectors prefer to look for oil and gas underground.

Anyone read Sunborn by Benford? Not hailed as one of his better books, it offers a pretty far out alternate life form.

Anyway, we are often pretty limiting in what we think it takes for life. As oxymoronic as "plasma crystals" might be, there might be some semblance of order out there we can't imagine and are missing.

@visionabler: Bad analogy. If we missed all the plants then we're idiots. If you were looking for life from the sat image on Google Maps on said hill, then you are closer to the point I think. The distance from which we are observing this stuff makes it pretty much impossible. Seems to me we are just seeing spectra from complex organic clouds from REALLY far away.

We haven't really ruled out life being anywhere except maybe on some of the smaller asteroids. Definitely not ruled out on Mars or Venus, our next closest planetary neighbors. Finding that organic compounds are more plentiful than we thought is exciting and terrifying at the same time.

That's some pretty crazy stuff. I'd really like to hear more on the postulated mechanisms for the formation
...
and how they calibrate(d) that thing and account for possible interferents.

I'm sure it's not the same, but that's why I'm curious, our FTIR has trouble with too much of a compound in a matrix - right in front of it's "face". I guess we're looking at much simpler HCs too, but still... fascinating stuff.

IMO - Stars are life forms. They're born, grow up, send huge amounts of information across space and time to OTHER stars, grow old and "die"(more- transform - to another level of energy).
Sorta sounds like a life form - as we know it - to me...

Not to mention - they seed the formation of OTHER stars and solar systems with "themselves" when they DO - transform.
THATs being environmentally conscious...

IMO - Stars are life forms. They're born, grow up, send huge amounts of information across space and time to OTHER stars, grow old and "die"(more- transform - to another level of energy).
Sorta sounds like a life form - as we know it - to me...

Except they don't/can't reproduce, and they don't/can't accumulate information regarding their environment (in the form of adaptation.)

IMO - Stars are life forms.

Except they don't/can't reproduce, and they don't/can't accumulate information regarding their environment (in the form of adaptation.)

Prove it PE. Maybe we are just too small to notice. Maybe we were too small to warrant their attention. Maybe Sol is trying to get our attention now with its cycle or CMEs or ...

I won't say I think stars are life forms, but maybe we shouldn't be closed to the idea. The book I mentioned earlier by Benford uses ultra-low frequency communications between plasma beings outside near the bow shock. Ultra-low with wavelengths on the order of kilometers, something we would be very hard pressed to detect. All I am saying is that our perspective and experience are extremely narrow.

And maybe they're smart enough to make the environment adapt to them...:-)

Anyway, they don't reproduce like cows or single celled organisms. Maybe we haven't been around long enough to see what their reproductions will even be.. However they DO leave around a mass that eventually collects with other clumps of mass that eventually causes a large enough clump to form - another star... Or maybe even - dark matter...
Additionally , they have adapted well enough to their own place in the universe (their environment) to survive long enough to create stable orbits and solar systems so that OTHER life forms can have a chance at repeating the star's success... Heck, maybe WE are what they reproduce to...

"Theoretically, this is impossible, but observationally we can see it happening."
:D

"..Since coal and oil are remnants of ancient life, this type of organic matter was thought to arise only from living organisms. ."

Well maybe its time to lose that notion. Coal and Oil are not remnants of live but primordeal substances, affected by deep living organisms.

Another clear piece of evidence Thomas Gold was and is right. Coal and Oil are Geology worked on by Biology, not the other way round.

Intriguing thoughts, to be sure. If the current information concerning the differing isotopic signatures of the Earth and of the other planets holds true, it could lend itself to such an hypothesis.

Certain species spawn at the times at or near their deaths. Could this be the same or similar for solar systems?

One star begins to die and ejects part of itself as part of that prolonged death. Another star nearby, with differing isotopic composition does the same shortly thereafter, seeding the other remnants of gas and dust and setting up the process for the births of other stars and their solar systems.

It is at least an interesting thought experiment. :)

LOL. . .I cannot believe what I'm reading in this thread. . .you guys are such fun. . . .I do hope you're just kidding. Stars as life forms? And at their death they spew out compounds essential to life which are then picked up by other stars as a means of procreation? What, are you comparing the stuff spewed out to sperm? Please, does anybody have any equations, or is this just silliness? I thought matter/energy could only be recycled, not destroyed or created. Great, now you've given me a headache.

"at their death they spew out compounds essential to life which are then picked up by other stars as a means of procreation?"

At their death and all their lives they are doing just that.
RE-creation. All the gases and particulate released eventually combines with the same from other stars and "voila" - a star is born.

"What, are you comparing the stuff spewed out to sperm?"
Sperm is not the only method of reproduction. And - would make for some really ugly star porn...

"I thought matter/energy could only be recycled, not destroyed or created."

Recycling is EXACTLY what we are talking about - into all kinds of "life"-forms. In a universe of infinite possibly, offspring do not necessarily have to be replicas.

"The funny thing about 'the big picture' is that there always turns out to be a bigger picture..."

This is more support for the abiotic oil theory.

Let's see...we have entire moons made of complex organics, yet some scientists still haven't gotten the message?
Can scientists really be this stupid?
Apparently, some are.
Especially, if they are being paid to support the current paradigm.
Oil is abiotic. Time to stop lying to protect the market share of big oil, and their twisted brothers in the "green' movement.

As you can see from my previous post, we're on the same page. One poster's non-sequitur is another poster's logical connection.

IMO - Stars are life forms.

Except they don't/can't reproduce, and they don't/can't accumulate information regarding their environment (in the form of adaptation.)

Prove it PE. Maybe we are just too small to notice. Maybe we were too small to warrant their attention. Maybe Sol is trying to get our attention now with its cycle or CMEs or ...

I won't say I think stars are life forms, but maybe we shouldn't be closed to the idea. The book I mentioned earlier by Benford uses ultra-low frequency communications between plasma beings outside near the bow shock. Ultra-low with wavelengths on the order of kilometers, something we would be very hard pressed to detect. All I am saying is that our perspective and experience are extremely narrow.

Is this yet another resurrection of sun worhip?

Remember this? http://www.nytime...tan.html

It could be possible if these compounds are actually prevalent in space itself, then it seems to reason actual space borne life forms could evolve in available regions of space. Perhaps one day it will be possible to bio-engineer actual space ships for travel between the stars?

Well maybe its time to lose that notion.

Possibly, but at present the evidence does not support the idea.

Coal and Oil are not remnants of live but primordeal substances

No. Flat out no for coal. Coal is from surface plant life. The evidence is clear. It is not just a bunch of black stuff. All forms except the metamorphic anthracite have clear evidence of being from plants. Anthracite looks to just be a metamorphic form of bituminous.

Another clear piece of evidence Thomas Gold was and is right.

Not if he said coal as well as oil and the there is still no real evidence to support his claim for oil. Indeed there is no evidence that is not covered reasonably well by standard geology.

Ethelred

hey this threads getting old but i just wanted to give a shout out to the plasma crystals:
http://www.newsci...ust.html

not sure what they are, but there was a spate of news coverage about them a while back. very interesting!

as for the living star idea, Frank Herbert covered that pretty thoroughly in his novel The Whipping Star. Seems totally plausible to me. As I've suggested many times life is a mechanism for organizing and trapping energy, which many energetic bodies we observe in the universe also do. Energy is energy, organizing and storing it seems to be a basic observed phenomenon.

Good link, Whitebear. And your decription of life well said.
Ethelread - I THINK you are saying carbon based geologics are all from surface bio forms (Oil included?).
However, if we step back to a largaer scalar perspective - all life forms are originally star-stuff and therefore - primordial. So, carboniferous leftovers are an evolutionarily modified version of primordial stuff... Yes, I think evolution applies to EVERYTHING...:-)

Could alien life exist in the form of dancing specks of dust?

Thanks for the link, this is why links are often needed. So here is another:
http://en.wikiped...ysics%29]http://en.wikiped...ysics%29[/url]

I don't see why they call a charged dust a plasma. Or a crystal for that matter.

Another link that seems appropriate:
http://en.wikiped...ysics%29]http://en.wikiped...ysics%29[/url]

Jumbo Shrimp
Idiot Savant
Living dead
Post modern

All of those are cases of a bad choice of words to make it sound cool.

Sometimes English bugs me.

Ethelred

I THINK you are saying carbon based geologics are all from surface bio forms (Oil included?).

No. I am pointing out that COAL is from plant life and he is trying to claim coal, as well as oil, is abiotic.

It was hpvvz's first and so far only post and then it was supported with four posts by StNicked. Guess when he started and how many posts he has made. Those posts reek of a political agenda. I seriously doubt that either will reply to me. It is even less likely that the hypothetical reply will support the claim in anything resembling a rational manner.

Yes that is bait. Bet they don't even see it. It isn't a really trolling. It is counter trolling to either get them to respond or if they don't it shows the two were just a set of hit an run political trolls.

To most of us this a very interesting article. To some it is an excuse to support a rather silly politically based idea.>>

However, if we step back to a largaer scalar perspective - all life forms are originally star-stuff

Yes, I have a copy of Cosmos on my hard drives and I can do a fairly good impersonation of Sagan.

and therefore - primordial.

Not their point. The point of that idea is they are trying to claim we can't use up the Earths oil. The idea was VERY popular with Ronald Reagan.

Don't be surprised if the trolls are also Creationists.

Yes, I think evolution applies to EVERYTHING...:-)

In some senses of the word. Everything except Marjon anyway.

Ethelred

Is this complex matter really organic? What about synthetic oil/coal which is chemically produced (not an expert in these things).

Billions (bet ya can't say just one)

CAn't use up earths oil? Of course we can. The Earth is a finite system with finite "resources".

Don't know who or what Marjon is, but remember - anomalies/mutations are a rule of evolution. Without them there would be no (r)evolution.

The funny thing about "the big picture" is that there always turns out to be a bigger picture...

Is this complex matter really organic?

You'd think organic means "coming from an organism", but alas, the word is in the English language so no such luck. I think Seager and Slabaugh sum it up nicely (lifted from Wikipedia):

The distinction between "organic" and "inorganic" carbon compounds, while "useful in organizing the vast subject of chemistry... is somewhat arbitrary"

http://en.wikiped...compound
The wikipedia entry has more on it.

Cynical:

CAn't use up earths oil? Of course we can. The Earth is a finite system with finite "resources".

Excellent point.

Oh, and Marjon is a fellow poster. Ethelred, who never makes personal attacks, seems to have made a personal attack. Shame on you Eth! Ryggie didn't even post on this thread.

Is this complex matter really organic?

Yes because it is hydrocarbon chemistry not because it may or may not have life involved.

What about synthetic oil/coal which is chemically produced

Synthetic oil is made from coal and is made of hydrocarbons. The thing is that the study of organic chemistry, if you take it at college, is inherently about life and used the word ORGANIC. However there is no requirement for a compound of one carbon and four hydrogen atoms be made by living organisms for be called an organic chemical.

Ethelred

CAn't use up earths oil? Of course we can. The Earth is a finite system with finite "resources".

What does reality have to do with it? Political trolls have no interest in reality.

Marjon is the original name of
http://www.physor...gesogn2/

http://www.physor.../marjon/

He stopped using his original account when Skeptic Heretic figured out who may really be. He has used more than the one name since but seems to have settled on only using ryggesogn2, he made some creationist posts under another name. ryggesogn2 is much harder to type than Marjon. His present name looks like a encryption password.

anomalies/mutations are a rule of evolution.

Marjon's posts a are collection of unrelated anomalies that don't mutate and never change. Thus he does not evolve.

Ethelred

Pyle

Ethelred, who never makes personal attacks, seems to have made a personal attack.

I never claimed I don't make personal attacks. I just claim they are warranted. I have the warrant right here.

Ethelred is hereby authorized to use all due force and diligence to end mindless posting wherever and whenever he observes it. He is authorized to use metaphors, parody, logic, best known evidence, reasonable surmises, wild assed guesses(those must labeled as such) and may attack both the logic, fact and even the actual person of the offending posters.

The authorizing agent seems to have forgotten to sign the affidavit but I can assure you that it is a legitimate authorization. I asked for full carte blanche but I was told that only Richelieu is allowed to authorize that.

Ethelred

Marjon's posts a are collection of unrelated anomalies that don't mutate and never change. Thus he does not evolve.

Just means everything else evolves it's way around it...;-)

Lifenists
Denialists and Warmists are soooo yesterday.

Ground control to hush1. Complex organic matters. Are you a Lifenist or just blowing in the stellar wind? Its quite a view out there.

lol
Hush1 to ground control.
Roger. No 'death' here. Everything here appears to be teeming with life only. Check your specs., ground control.

I guess then that this discovery could prove that the Universe is flooded with Molecular Hydrogen and is the fable Dark matter that cannot be seen (only the warmest Molecular Hydrogen can be detected ) Molecular Hydrogen could be reacting with the abundance of other Molecules giving us these compounds via the catalyst of a Nova explosion.
water and Carbon Monoxide have been detected in deep space thus maybe providing evidence of Molecular Hydrogen.

http://www.newton...dex.html