'Sweet spot' for life's chemistry found - Technology & science - Science - DiscoveryNews.com - msnbc.com:
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When scientists realized early Earth didn't have the right ingredients for life on its own, they started looking in space for the complex organic molecules needed to get things going.
Of particular interest is methanol, which can trigger the more complex chemistry that leads to amino acids, the building blocks for proteins and life.
"Methanol is the most complex molecule you can form at the really low temperatures in interstellar space," astronomer Douglas Whittet, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, told Discovery News. "When you put methanol into a newly forming star system, you have some heat from a proto-sun and that's when methanol really takes off. It's the springboard for more exciting chemistry that follows."
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