A team of scientists has achieved a feat by finding complex organic molecules in a protoplanetary disc surrounding a young star for the first time ever in history. The significance of the molecules could be understood with the fact that they are building blocks of life, which gives rise to the belief for life beyond the solar system.

Details of the find have been published in the journal Nature. According to the scientists who performed the stint, large amounts of methyl cyanide (CH3CN) were detected by them in the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star MWC 480.

The discovery has excited researchers as the molecules exhibit links between carbon and nitrogen atoms. Formation of amino acids largely depends on these chemical links. Amino acids are basic components of proteins and thus, are highly required for building life.

The researchers have revealed that both the methyl cyanide molecule and its simpler cousin, hydrogen cyanide (HCN), were detected by them in the cold outer reaches of the star's newly formed disc around MWC 480.

Size of the star MWC 480 is 10 times bigger than the sun and it is located about 455 light years from earth in the Tauro star-spawning formation.

The discovery was made possible with the help of the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, or ALMA, in northern Chile. The discovery has made it crystal clear that conditions that spawned earth and the sun are not unique in the universe.

"We now have even better evidence that this same chemistry exists elsewhere in the Universe, in regions that could form solar systems not unlike our own", said Karin Öberg, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lead author of the new paper.

This is great news from the point of view of life in the universe, said Öberg.