Building blocks of life detected in ice outside the Milky Way for first time ever

A photo of a colorful starr region with a zoomed-in inset showing the star ST6.

For the first time, scientists have spotted multiple complex building blocks of life in the ice around a star outside the Milky Way.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers detected five large, carbon-based compounds around a protostar in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits closely to the Milky Way. The findings could help scientists learn how complex molecules formed in the early universe, according to a study published Oct. 20 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.