<story><title>In deep space, astronomers spot precursor of carbon based life</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/27/jwst_carbon_molecule_discovery/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>beeforpork</author><text>Why is this a thing today?  There are many complex molecule clouds floating around in space.  More complex stuff than methyl has been found.  Searching quickly to refresh my memory, they found formic acid in 1990:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;europepmc.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;med&amp;#x2F;11538681&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;europepmc.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;med&amp;#x2F;11538681&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;and amino acetonitrile in 2008:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mpg.de&amp;#x2F;567495&amp;#x2F;pressRelease20080325&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mpg.de&amp;#x2F;567495&amp;#x2F;pressRelease20080325&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;By the title of this article, I would have guessed they found, say, an amino acid.  Which is also already speculated and expected, but has possibly not yet been detected before.  But methyl seems a bit trivial to me, or is the detection of it special and interesting in some other ways?  I am not at all an expert, only quite interested.</text></comment>
<story><title>In deep space, astronomers spot precursor of carbon based life</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/27/jwst_carbon_molecule_discovery/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>napsterbr</author><text>Can someone enlighten me on how it&amp;#x27;s possible for a space telescope to detect far away &lt;i&gt;molecules&lt;/i&gt;?&lt;p&gt;I suppose it&amp;#x27;s not actually seeing the molecules themselves, but something that proves the molecules are there. The article mentions:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; UV rays [...] provided the energy to form the molecules&lt;p&gt;Is that it? The telescope detected UV rays, which necessarily (according to the scientists) correlates to the creation of methyl cations?</text></comment>