Jingszo !

Astronomers have detected signs of complex organic molecules, the precursors to the building blocks of life as we know it, in a planet-forming disk around a distant star. The findings imply that the chemical seeds of life are constructed in space and are then spread to young or newly forming planets.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA), a system of radio telescopes in Chile, the team detected traces of 17 complex organic molecules in the protoplanetary disc of V883 Orionis, a young star located around 1,305 light-years away in the constellation of Orion.

V883 Orionis is an infant star, or protostar, that is estimated to be just 500,000 years old, and it's in the active phase of gathering mass and forming planets. If 0.5 million years old seems ancient, consider that our middle-aged sun is about 4.6 billion years old.