NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Discovers 'Building Blocks' Of Life In Icy Space Clouds

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States said on Monday that its James Webb Space Telescope has discovered an in-depth inventory of the "deepest, coldest ices measured to date in a molecular cloud".

Melissa McClure, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands and principal investigator of the observing programme said, “These observations open a new window on the formation pathways for the simple and complex molecules that are needed to make the building blocks of life.”

The telescope was able to peer into a cloud that is 630 light years away and find not only simple ices like water, but also frozen forms of a wide range of molecules like carbonyl sulfide, ammonia, and methane, to the simplest complex organic molecule, methanol.

"This is the most comprehensive census to date of the icy ingredients available to make future generations of stars and planets, before they are heated during the formation of young stars," NASA said in its press release.

The researchers used Webb’s infrared abilities to study how starlight from beyond the molecular cloud was absorbed by the icy molecules within. "This process left us with “chemical fingerprints,” or absorption lines, that could be compared with lab data to identify the molecules," NASA said in an Instagram post.

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