2023-07-14 19:19:27
DECRYPTION – One atom of carbon, three of hydrogen and a missing electron: such is the summary identity card of the methylcation, or methyl cation (CH3+).
With just one hydrogen atom less than methane, this positively charged molecule would be a fundamental building block of organic chemistry because it is a very reactive compound capable of easily forming more complex chains by combining with itself, other atoms or other molecules. CH3+, a priori very common, had however always escaped astronomers.
Until an international team announced, at the end of June, in Nature having flushed it out somewhat by chance thanks to the extraordinary capabilities of the James-Webb Space Telescope (JWST) at the edge of the Orion cloud, precisely in the protoplanetary disc d203-506, a set of gas and dust rotating around a small dwarf star five to ten times less massive than the Sun, in which planets are probably forming.
« Astrophysicists and chemists have been predicting the existence of the methylcation in the interstellar medium since the 1970s says Olivier Berné…
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