Summary

Description	ALMA has observed stars like the Sun at a very early stage in their formation and found traces of methyl isocyanate — a chemical building block of life. This is the first ever detection of this prebiotic molecule towards a solar-type protostar, the sort from which our Solar System evolved. The discovery could help astronomers understand how life arose on Earth. The video is available in 4K UHD. The ESOcast Light is a series of short videos bringing you the wonders of the Universe in bite-sized pieces. The ESOcast Light episodes will not be replacing the standard, longer ESOcasts, but complement them with current astronomy news and images in ESO press releases. Credit : ESO Visual Design and Editing: Nico Bartmann Web and technical support: Mathias André and Raquel Yumi Shida Written by: Hannah Dalgleish, Lauren Fuge, Oana Sandu and Richard Hook Music: tonelabs – The Red North Footage and photos: ESO, P. Horálek, L. Calçada, Digitized Sky Survey 2, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org), S. Guisar
Date	2017-06-08
Source	commons.wikimedia.org
Author	ESO

Licensing

CC BY

Attribution: ESO, 2017-06-08