methanol

Other polymer films she developed dramatically improve the efficiency of methanol fuel cells.

So the disk must have inherited its methanol from the interstellar cloud that forged its central star, the researchers conclude.

There, the team spotted methanol, which is thought to be a building block for life’s molecules, such as amino acids and proteins.

The disk is too warm for the methanol to have formed there, so this complex organic molecule probably originated in the interstellar cloud that collapsed to form the star and its disk, researchers report online May 10 in Nature Astronomy.

In the planet-forming disk of gas and dust around a young star, astronomers have detected methanol.