Astronomers from Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have detected for the first time the molecules methanimine and hydrogen cyanide – two ingredients that build life-forming amino acids – in a galaxy some 250 million light years away.

“Just add water!” said Robert Minchin, an Arecibo astronomer on the project, who explained that methanimine and hydrogen cyanide are two of the basic ingredients of life, because when combined with water they form glycine, the simplest amino acid, a building block of life on Earth.

The astronomy team, led by Arecibo astronomer Christopher Salter, announced this discovery today (Jan. 11) in a poster presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin. The Arecibo Observatory is managed by Cornell University for National Science Foundation.

The Arecibo astronomers focused on the distant galaxy Arp 220, an ultra-luminous starburst galaxy, because it forms new stars at a very high rate. They used the 305-meter, or 1,000-foot diameter, Arecibo radio telescope, the world’s largest and most sensitive, to observe the galaxy at different frequencies. In fact, for the first time in April 2007, they used the 800 megahertz wide-band mode of the main spectrometer to make these detections.

Just add water?

These molecules were found by searching for radio emission at specific frequencies. Each chemical substance has its own unique radio frequency and astronomers can in that way identify the different substances, much like people can be identified with their unique fingerprints.

“We weren’t targeting any particular molecule, so we didn’t know what we were going to find – we just started searching, and what we found was incredibly exciting,” said Tapasi Ghosh, an Arecibo astronomer.

“The fact that we can observe these substances at such a vast distance means that there are huge amounts of them in Arp 220,” said Emmanuel Momjian, a former Arecibo astronomer, now at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, N.M. “It is indeed very intriguing to find that the ingredients of life appear in large quantities where new stars and planets are born.”

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In addition to Minchin, Salter, Momjian and Ghosh, the other astronomers included: Barbara Catinella, a former Arecibo astronomer now at the Max Plank Institute for Astrophysics in Germany; Mayra Lebron, a former Arecibo astronomer now at the University of Puerto Rico; and Mikael Lerner, an Arecibo astronomer.

Looks pretty cool, eh?

Cosmologists have run a series of huge computer simulations of the Universe that could ultimately help solve the mystery of dark energy.

Results of the simulations, carried out by Durham University’s world-leading Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC), tell researchers how to measure dark energy – a repulsive force that counteracts gravity.

The findings, published today (Friday, January 11) in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, will also provide vital input into the design of a proposed satellite mission called SPACE – the SPectroscopic All-sky Cosmic Explorer – that could unveil the nature of dark energy.

The discovery of dark energy in 1998 was completely unexpected and understanding its nature is one of the biggest problems in physics.

Scientists believe dark energy, which makes up 70 per cent of the Universe, is driving its accelerating expansion. If this expansion continues to accelerate experts say it could eventually lead to a Big Freeze as the Universe is pulled apart and becomes a vast cold expanse of dying stars and black holes.

The Durham research was funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the European Commission

The simulations, which took 11 days to run on Durham’s unique Cosmology Machine (COSMA) computer, looked at tiny ripples in the distribution of matter in the Universe made by sound waves a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang.

The ripples are delicate and some have been destroyed over the subsequent 13 billion years of the Universe, but the simulations showed they survived in certain conditions.

By changing the nature of dark energy in the simulations, the researchers discovered that the ripples appeared to change in length and could act as a “standard ruler” in the measurement of dark energy.

ICC Director Professor Carlos Frenk said: “The ripples are a ‘gold standard’. By comparing the size of the measured ripples to the gold standard we can work out how the Universe has expanded and from this figure out the properties of the dark energy.

“Astronomers are stuck with the one universe we live in. However, the simulations allow us to experiment with what might have happened if there had been more or less dark energy in the universe.”

Shows the changes in the universe’s rate of expansion

In the next five to 10 years a number of experiments are planned to explore dark energy. The Durham simulation has demonstrated the feasibility of the SPACE satellite mission proposed to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Cosmic Vision programme.

The project has been put forward by an international consortium of researchers including the Durham team.

SPACE, which is led by Bologna University, in Italy, is through to the next round of assessment by the ESA and if successful is planned to launch in 2017.

Co-principal investigator Professor Andrea Cimatti, of Bologna University, said: “Thanks to the ICC simulations it is possible to predict what SPACE would observe and to plan how to develop the mission parameters in order to obtain a three-dimensional map of the Universe and to compare it with the predictions of the simulations.

“Thanks to this comparison it will be possible to unveil the nature of dark energy and to understand how the structures in the Universe built up and evolved with cosmic time.”

Just a couple parallel universes

An article published yesterday suggested the idea that our universe may be no more than a “speck of cosmic dust” amongst the infinite number of parallel worlds. This idea isn’t really anything new, however, an increasing number of scientists are beginning to at least warm up to the idea of this theory.

The idea of multiple universes is more than a fantastic invention — it appears naturally within several scientific theories, and deserves to be taken seriously,” said Aurelien Barrau, a French particle physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), a well-known and reputable research group.

“The multiverse is no longer a model, it is a consequence of our models,” explained Barrau, who recently published an essay for CERN in defense of this concept.

There are many overlapping and conflicting theories on the concept of parallel universes. The simplest one, overwhelming as it may be, consists of the idea that if the universe is truly infinite, everything that can possibly occur has already happened, or will happen.

Some other theories on parallel universes, or the multiverse, include the Bubble theory (as illustrated on the left), which states that bubble universes may form under a parent universe, which may expand and contract, sort of like a balloon. If energy fluctuations are great enough, a sub-universe can grow to contain galactic structures and such.

Or maybe we’re in just one of the bubbles?

Think this is all just a load of hogwash? People once thought the existence of black holes, the curvature of space, and even the idea that our very own planet Earth was round were crazy and unfathomable ideas, until these theories were proven through science, and became fact.

What universe am I in now? Do instances of my existence occur in other parallel universes? These are questions you may ponder, but never truly know the answer, if there even is one. A truly mind-boggling concept.

Some further reading for you curious-minded folk:

• Physics in the Multiverse
• Preprint of David Deutsch’s paper The Structure of the Multiverse
  
• BBC Horizon -Parallel Universes