Ring molecule found in Titan's sky may be building block of life

摘要

A CIRCULAR molecule spotted on Saturn's moon Titan may help form precursors to life. This compound hasn't been seen in the atmosphere of any planet or moon before. The molecule is called cyclopropenylidene and is made up of three carbon atoms in a ring with two hydrogen atoms attached. Conor Nixon at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and his colleagues spotted it floating in Titan's thick atmosphere using the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array in Chile.