Did life originate from low-temperature areas of the Universe?

TL;DR

This paper explores how complex organic molecules, essential for life, can form in the cold regions of space through barrierless reactions involving atomic carbon, suggesting life could originate in low-temperature environments.

Contribution

It demonstrates that complex organic molecules can form via barrierless reactions in cold interstellar regions, highlighting a potential pathway for life's building blocks to originate in space.

Findings

Organic molecules can form at low temperatures in space.

Barrierless reactions involving atomic carbon are efficient in forming biological molecules.

Formation of organic compounds in cold regions may be underestimated.

Abstract

The biological molecules delivered to Earth on the board of meteorites and comets were called one of the possible causes of the origin of life. Therefore, our understanding of the routes of formation of biomolecules in space should shed the light on the possibility of the existence of habitable extrasolar planets. The large abundance of organic molecules is found in the space regions with the lowest temperature. Different routes of the organics formation in these areas were suggested. In this article, we demonstrate that complex organic molecules same as important biological molecules can be formed due to the reaction of C atoms with the mantels of molecular ices covering refractory dust grains present in the interstellar medium (ISM). Having four valence electrons, C atoms act as glue joining simple non-organic molecules and converting them into organic matter. The formation of many molecules is barrierless and thus can happen at low temperature. The barrierless reaction C + NH3 + CO -> NH2CHCO attracts particular interest. The product of this reaction is an isomer of the central residue of a peptide chain and expected to be efficiently formed in the translucent molecular clouds. The polymerization of these molecules leads to the formation of proteins that according to some theories are life's first molecules. Considering a high abundance of atomic carbon in the ISM, we expect a high efficiency of the formation of a large variety of different organic molecules, and show why the amount of organic material formed by condensation of atomic carbon may be underestimated.