Life in the Universe Could Be Much More Prevalent Than Astronomers Thought

When we hear the term “extraterrestrial life”, the first thing we imagine is represented by little green men with big black eyes. But aliens could be the size of microbes and in much more different forms than any of us would ever imagine.

According to ZME Science, scientists from the University of Leeds have found big repositories of organic molecules near young stars. This obviously raises the chances for alien life to exist throughout the Galaxy.

Disks of gas and dust particles contain organic molecules

The research detailed the discovery of the molecules in disks of dust and gas that also orbit around stars. The ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array) radio telescope from Chile was used.

Kartin Öberg, who’s one of the authors, declared in a statement for EurekAlert!:

These planet-forming disks are teeming with organic molecules, some which are implicated in the origins of life here on Earth,

This is really exciting. The chemicals in each disk will ultimately affect the type of planets that form and determine whether or not the planets can host life.

Study lead author Dr. John Ilee declared, as cited by SciTechDaily.com:

These large complex organic molecules are found in various environments throughout space. Laboratory and theoretical studies have suggested that these molecules are the ‘raw ingredients’ for building molecules that are essential components in biological chemistry on Earth, creating sugars, amino acids, and even the components of ribonucleic acid (RNA) under the right conditions.

Our Milky Way galaxy has a diameter of roughly 100,000 light-years, and it contains somewhere between 100 billion and 200 billion stars. Such numbers obviously represent plenty of space and time available for life to develop elsewhere except on Earth.