Space & Physics
What brought carbon to Earth
This marks the first time a complex form of carbon essential for life on Earth has been observed outside the solar system. To learn more about the significance of this discovery, EdPublica interviewed the researchers behind the study– Gabi Wenzel, Ilsa Cooke, and Brett McGuire, who shared their insights on the implications of pyrene’s presence in space and its potential impact on our understanding of star and planet formation
A team led by researchers at MIT has detected pyrene, a complex carbon-containing molecule, in a distant interstellar cloud. This finding opens new avenues for understanding the chemical origins of our solar system. Pyrene, a type of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), was found in a molecular cloud similar to the one from which our solar system formed.
This marks the first time a complex form of carbon essential for life on Earth has been observed outside the solar system. Its discovery sheds light on how the compounds necessary for life could originate in space. The team detected pyrene in
a star-forming region known as the Taurus Molecular Cloud, located 430 light-years away, making it one of the closest such clouds to Earth.
This discovery also aligns with recent findings from the asteroid Ryugu, suggesting that pyrene may have played a key role in the carbon composition of the early solar system. To learn more about the significance of this discovery, EdPublica interviewed the researchers behind the study– Gabi Wenzel, Ilsa Cooke, and Brett McGuire, who shared their insights on the implications of pyrene’s presence in space and its potential impact on our understanding of star and planet formation. Brett McGuire is an assistant professor of chemistry at MIT, Ilsa Cooke is an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of British Columbia, and Gabi Wenzel is a postdoctoral researcher in McGuire’s group at MIT.
Below, the team responds to questions from EdPublica Editor Dipin Damodharan about this unexpected and exciting discovery.
‘Pyrene could be a major source of carbon in our solar system’
Q: How does the discovery of pyrene in TMC-1 enhance our understanding of the chemical inventory that contributed to the formation of our solar system?
Gabi Wenzel:
Stars much like our own sun are born from dense molecular clouds. The discovery of pyrene in a molecular cloud called TMC-1, one that might be very similar to our sun’s natal cloud and which will go on to form a star of its own, significantly enhances our understanding of the chemical inventory that contributed to the formation of our own solar system. As a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), pyrene is one of the most complex organic molecules found in early molecular clouds, suggesting that the building blocks of organic matter were available in the environments where stars and their orbiting (exo)planets form.
This discovery sheds light on the chemical processes occurring in interstellar space, including gas-phase and surface reactions on dust grains, which are crucial for the evolution of organic chemistry. This further supports the notion that the primordial materials of our solar system contained a diverse range of organic compounds, providing insights into the potential for prebiotic chemistry on a young Earth and planetesimals.
Q: What specific challenges did you face in detecting pyrene, given that it is invisible to traditional radio astronomy methods, and how did the use of cyanopyrene help overcome these challenges?
Gabi Wenzel:
Pyrene, a fully symmetric PAH, does not possess a permanent electric dipole moment and hence is invisible in radio astronomical observations or rotational spectrometers in the laboratory. The CN radical is highly abundant in the cold and dark molecular cloud TMC-1, an environment that is about 10 K cold and in which you’d assume little chemistry to happen. However, earlier experimental works have shown that the CN addition (followed by hydrogen abstraction) to ringed hydrocarbon species such as benzene and toluene at low temperatures is a barrierless process.
Adding a CN (nitrile) group to a hydrocarbon will drastically increase its permanent electric dipole moment and so allow rotational transitions. Indeed, several CN-functionalized species have been detected in TMC-1 and other sources, among which the CN-substituted benzene (cyanobenzene or benzonitrile) and other smaller PAHs, with cyanopyrene being the largest molecule found via radio astronomy to date, allowing us to infer the presence of pyrene itself.
Q: Can you elaborate on what it means for our understanding of carbon sources in the solar system that pyrene is found in both TMC-1 and asteroid Ryugu?
Ilsa Cooke:
TMC-1 is a famous example of a cold molecular cloud, one of the earliest stages of star and planet formation, while asteroids like Ryugu represent snapshots of later stages in the formation of solar systems. Asteroids are formed from material in the solar nebula that was inherited from the molecular cloud stage. Our radio observations of TMC-1 let us observe pyrene early on and possibly under conditions where it is first forming. Isotope signatures of the pyrene in Ryugu suggest it was formed in a cold interstellar cloud. From these two unique sets of measurements, we can start to unravel the inheritance of pyrene, and PAHs more generally, from their birth in interstellar space and their journey to new planets. If PAHs can survive all the way from the molecular cloud stage, they may provide planets with an important source of organic carbon.
Q: What are the different formation routes of PAHs that your research suggests, and how do these differ from previous hypotheses about PAH formation in space?
Ilsa Cooke:
Our results, combined with those of Zeichner et al., who measured pyrene in Ryugu, suggest that pyrene may form at low temperatures by “bottom-up” routes in molecular clouds. Previously, PAHs were most commonly associated with formation in high-temperature (ca. 1000 K) environments in the envelopes of dying stars. These stars are thought to eject their PAHs, along with other carbon-rich molecules, into the diffuse interstellar medium.
However, the diffuse medium is a tenuous, harsh environment permeated by ultraviolet photons, and most astrochemists think that small PAHs would not survive their journey through the diffuse medium into dense molecular clouds. So we are still left with a puzzle: does that pyrene that we observe in TMC-1 form there, or was it formed somewhere else but it was able to survive its journey more efficiently than previously thought? If the pyrene is indeed formed within TMC-1, we do not yet know the chemical mechanism. Many possibilities exist, so close collaborations between laboratory astrochemists and observers will be critical to answer this question.
Q: What are your plans for investigating larger PAH molecules in TMC-1, and what specific hypotheses are you looking to test with these investigations?
Brett McGuire:
We have a number of other targets lined up – again focusing on PAH structures that should show this special stability demonstrated by pyrene. They present the same experimental challenges, including needing to devise appropriate synthetic routes in the laboratory before collecting their spectra. The major question is just how complex the PAH inventory actually gets at this earliest stage of star formation.
Prior to our work in TMC-1, nearly everything we knew about PAHs came from infrared observations of bulk properties in much warmer and more energetic regions, where PAHs are thought to be much larger. Does the population in TMC-1 look the same as in these regions? Is it at an earlier stage of chemical evolution? And how does this distribution compare to what we see in our own Solar System?
Q: How do your findings about pyrene and PAHs in interstellar clouds influence our broader understanding of organic chemistry in the universe, particularly in relation to the origins of life?
Brett McGuire:
Life as we know it depends on carbon – it is the backbone upon which all our molecular structures are constructed. Yet, the Earth overall is somewhat depleted in carbon relative to what we’d naively expect, and we still don’t fully understand where the carbon we do have came from originally. PAHs in general seem to be a massive reservoir of reactive carbon, and what we are now seeing is that that reservoir is already present at the earliest stages of star-formation. Combined with the evidence from Ryugu, we’re now also seeing indications that the inventory of PAHs, and thus this reservoir of carbon, may actually survive from this dark molecular cloud phase through the formation of a star to be eventually incorporated into the planetary system itself.
Space & Physics
Artemis Accords Reach 76 Countries: What It Means for India
The Artemis Accords now have 76 signatories. With NASA inviting ISRO to its Moon Base programme, India’s role in lunar exploration is expanding.
The Artemis Accords now have 76 signatories, expanding the international framework around the next phase of lunar exploration. For India, the milestone comes weeks after NASA invited the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to participate in its planned Moon Base programme.
Albania, Croatia, Côte d’Ivoire and San Marino joined the Accords in September, taking participation to 76 countries. NASA says nearly 40% of the world’s nations are now part of the framework, which sets principles for peaceful, transparent and responsible exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond.
India became the 27th signatory in June 2023. At the India-US Civil Space Joint Working Group meeting in Bengaluru in August, NASA invited ISRO to participate in its Moon Base programme. The two countries also agreed to advance discussions on open scientific-data sharing under the Accords.
India’s Moon Base opportunity
The invitation does not specify what India will contribute. NASA has said every Artemis Accords signatory can participate through scientific payloads, technology demonstrations, CubeSats and other capabilities. Any specific Indian contribution would require further agreements.
India, however, is developing its own increasingly ambitious lunar programme. ISRO’s Chandrayaan-4 is planned as a lunar sample-return mission, designed to collect samples from the Moon’s polar region and bring them back to Earth. Chandrayaan-5/LUPEX, being developed with Japan’s JAXA, will study lunar polar volatiles in situ.
These missions could give India experience and scientific capabilities relevant to a future international lunar infrastructure.
ISRO Shaping the Data Conversation
Scientific data could be another area of Indian participation. In May 2026, ISRO led an initial Artemis Accords discussion on advancing open-data practices. NASA subsequently held two workshops focused on making lunar scientific data more accessible, interoperable and reproducible across countries.
That is significant as more lunar missions target the same regions. Shared standards could allow researchers to combine observations from different spacecraft instead of treating each mission’s data separately.
Moon – Space Coperation
India-US space cooperation is also expanding into human spaceflight. ISRO’s 2025–26 annual report records that Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla travelled to the International Space Station in June 2025 as part of the Axiom-4 mission and conducted seven microgravity experiments. ISRO also held discussions with NASA on potential cooperation related to Gaganyaan.
The Artemis relationship therefore sits alongside an existing programme of India-US cooperation, including the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission.
What Changes for India?
The significance of the 76-country milestone lies in the network developing around it. The Artemis Accords cover scientific-data sharing, interoperability, non-interference between missions, emergency assistance and protection of historically significant lunar sites. NASA says signatories are now working through technical meetings and workshops to put these principles into practice.
For India, that creates several possible avenues: contributing technology or science to NASA’s Moon Base effort, sharing lunar data, and working with a growing group of countries on standards for increasingly crowded lunar operations. What India’s specific contribution to the Moon Base remains undecided. But with Chandrayaan-4, LUPEX and its human-spaceflight programme advancing alongside deeper NASA cooperation, India is entering the next phase of lunar exploration with its own capabilities already taking shape.
Space & Physics
JWST Finds Water Around a Dying Star Near the Milky Way’s Black Hole
A dying star near the Milky Way’s central black hole is shedding water, gas and dust into one of the galaxy’s most extreme environments.
A dying star nearing the end of its life is shedding material into space just 0.55 light-years from the Milky Way’s central black hole. And somehow, some of that material is holding on. New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed water and oxygen-rich dust surrounding IRS 3, an evolved star living remarkably close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy.
The finding gives astronomers a rare view of what happens when an ordinary stage of stellar evolution unfolds in an anything-but-ordinary neighbourhood.
A Dying Star Beside a Black Hole
IRS 3 is an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star, a late stage in the life of stars like this one. As such stars age, they swell, cool and lose material through powerful stellar winds. IRS 3 is doing exactly that. Gas and dust are streaming away from the star, creating a large envelope around it.
The star sits only about 0.55 light-years from Sagittarius A*. That may sound distant, but on the scale of the Galactic Centre it is remarkably close. Earth is about 26,000 light-years away from the same black hole.
Around Sagittarius A* is a crowded, energetic environment filled with intense radiation, dense gas and powerful gravitational forces. Astronomers have long wondered how stars manage to evolve and shed material there. IRS 3 is offering an answer.
Webb Finds Water in the Stellar Outflow
NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope looked at IRS 3 using its Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI. Infrared observations are particularly useful here because the dust surrounding the star glows strongly at these wavelengths.
The observations revealed oxygen-rich dust in the star’s envelope. They also produced the first detection of water in this material. This does not mean Webb found a pool, cloud or droplets of water. The water exists as molecules mixed into the hot gas and dust surrounding the star.
That distinction matters because molecules can be vulnerable in the harsh environment around the Galactic Centre. Radiation can break them apart, while the conditions around a supermassive black hole can affect the material being expelled by nearby stars. Yet water molecules are present around IRS 3.
The Star is Feeding Its Surroundings
IRS 3 is losing material rapidly as it approaches the end of its life. Researchers estimate that the star is shedding roughly the mass of Earth every 18 days. That enormous outflow is important beyond IRS 3 itself.
When evolved stars lose their outer layers, they return material to the space between stars. The gas carries elements produced during the star’s lifetime, while newly formed dust becomes part of the reservoir from which future cosmic structures can emerge. IRS 3 is therefore caught in a familiar cycle of stellar life: a star is dying, but the material it releases can become part of something else.
What makes this case unusual is that the recycling process is happening almost next door to a supermassive black hole.
How Much Can Survive Here?
The observation does not mean that the black hole has little influence on its surroundings. Sagittarius A* still creates an extreme environment, and the researchers are interested precisely because IRS 3 shows that stellar material can persist within it.
“Galactic centres are among the most extreme environments,” said Florian Peißker of the University of Cologne, the study’s lead author to media. With Webb, researchers can now examine the material around stars such as IRS 3 in much greater detail and ask how stellar winds, dust formation and molecular chemistry behave so close to a black hole. The answer emerging from IRS 3 is intriguing: the environment may be extreme, but it does not necessarily shut down the chemistry of a dying star.
For IRS 3, the end of its stellar life is already underway. Its outer layers are drifting away into the Galactic Centre, carrying dust, molecules and the chemical ingredients of future cosmic systems with them. Even in the shadow of the Milky Way’s central black hole, a dying star is still leaving something behind.
Space & Physics
India’s New Satellite Will Be Tested During Disasters
India’s latest Earth-observation satellite, EOS-05, could give disaster agencies a broader and more frequent view of floods, landslides and other hazards. But its real value will depend on how quickly satellite data can be turned into information that helps authorities act on the ground.
Icnoic Matterhorn Almost Snow-Free as Record Heat Accelerates Swiss Glacier Loss
Who Cares for India’s Older People?
Climate Change Is Already on Your Dinner Table. Here Is How It Got There
India Records Driest Monsoon in 11 Years as Rainfall Deficit Hits 12.6%
Not Broken but Unheld: A New UN Report Asks Us to Tend the Forest, Not Only the Tree
From Scams to Screens: How the National Stock Exchange Rewrote India’s Equity Story
Farmers Borrowed to Build ‘Diggis’. Two Years Later, They Are Still Waiting for the Subsidy
Aim for the Stars: Anjali Thomas’s Journey from a Small College in Kerala to the Frontiers of Medical Imaging
Anxiety Freezes Career Decisions. Curiosity Unfreezes Them
The Engineer of Tomorrow Is Already Here
-
Math2 months agoThe 2026 Fields Medals: Four Proofs, Four Decades-Old Problems Solved
-
Climate2 months ago
After Kerala’s Deadliest Landslide, the Hardest Thing to Rebuild Was Childhood
-
Society3 months ago
West Asia Crisis: Can Kerala’s Returning Gulf Migrants Find a Future in the Green Economy?
-
Space & Physics4 months ago
India Semiconductor Mission: ‘It’s Not About Fabs. It’s About Building An Entire Ecosystem’
-
Interviews1 week ago
From Scams to Screens: How the National Stock Exchange Rewrote India’s Equity Story
-
Climate4 months ago
The Climate World Cup? How Climate Change Could Affect Player Performance at the 2026 World Cup
-
Society3 months ago
What Is Civilisational Diplomacy? Understanding India’s Newest Foreign Policy Tool
-
Society4 months ago
From Bell Labs to the Classroom: A Second Career in Teaching
