An asteroid has helped researchers discover the largest molecule ever detected by radioastronomy, and the third-largest identified in space.
The discovery, published today (October 24) in Science, provides further clues to an astrochemical mystery: Where does carbon, the building block of life, come from and go to in the universe, including in our own solar system?
Researchers detected pyrene, a type of large carbon-containing molecule known as a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), in the Taurus molecular cloud a stellar nursery that is relatively close to Earth at only 430 light years away, or about four quadrillion kilometres (that's 15 zeroes).
