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The seeds of life on Earth might have come from outer space – and might be widespread throughout the rest of the universe, scientist say.

Researchers have found complex organic molecules in a disc around a “protostar” in a major breakthrough. Those molecules are seen as the precursors to the building blocks of life, which go on to become sugars and amino acids that are then combined into the complex flora and fauna that surrounds us.

Researchers have found such complex organic molecules in other places before. But the new findings fill in a previously mysterious missing link – one that could suggest that life is more abundant than we realise.

When cold protostar becomes a young star, surrounded by a disc of dust and gas, it is a violent process that includes intense radiation and the hurling out of gas. Researchers had been concerned that the extreme nature of that process could “reset” the chemical compounds available around a star, meaning that they would have to be formed in the discs that at the same time are making planets.

But the new findings suggest that complex molecules can stick around through that process, meaning they will be inherited by the discs that follow.

The findings are reported in a new study, ‘A deep search for Complex Organic Molecules toward the protoplanetary disk of V883 Ori’, published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters.