CfA astronomer Rafael Martin-Domenech and his colleagues used the ALMA telescope facility to search for glycolonitrile in the young, solar-type protostar IRAS16293-2422B. This well-studied object lies about five hundred light-years in the constellation of Ophiuchus. It has a cold outer envelope of gas and dust and a hotter inner region heated by the star extending out to about a hundred astronomical units. Numerous, simpler organic molecules had already been seen in this warm zone. The team searched for the characteristic spectral signature of glycolonitrile in three frequency bands of ALMA and found thirty-five of its transitions that were unambiguous. They modeled the data to reveal two components at two temperatures, about 24K and 158K, coming correspondingly from material in both the cold outer envelope of the star and its hotter inner zone. Their chemical analysis predicts a smaller abundance of the species than is actually seen, for both the cold and warm components, including under a variety of likely conditions including the cosmic ray ionization rate. The team concludes that some other chemical pathways must be operative, but that this critical chemical has now been measured and the theory is in general on the right track. Reference: “First Detection of the Pre-biotic Molecule Glycolonitrile (HOCH2CN) in the Interstellar Medium” S. Zeng, D. Quenard, I. Jimenez-Serra, J Martín-Pintado, V. M. Rivilla, L. Testi and R. Martın-Domenech, 14 January 2019, MNRAS.DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slz002
