Interstellar ices could have been the nursery for building blocks of life

Carbamic acid could have formed alongside stars and planets within interstellar ices and could have served as a molecular building block for more complex amino acids. The researchers who conducted the work said the findings could be used to train instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope to search for prebiotic molecules in distant, star-forming regions of the universe.

Researchers have hypothesised that amino acids could have been carried to Earth by meteorites, but whereabouts in space and what kinds of conditions they might have formed in is still a mystery.