Series of reactions reveals how complex carbon chemistry can begin in frigid space

Before there was Earth, there was chemistry. In the unimaginable cold, dark clouds where stars and planets are born, carbon molecules assemble into more complex forms, starting a chemical journey that could eventually deliver some of.

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Credit: The Journal of Physical Chemistry A (2026). But new research from FIU chemist Alexander Mebel reveals such chemistry can actually happen at temperatures nearing absolute zero, which is -460°F (-273°C).

On Earth, these complex carbon molecules are usually associated with extremely hot temperatures, such as those associated with combustion. But when astronomers detected one of these molecules last year, it was found in the cold, dark region known as Taurus Molecular Cloud-1.

Mebel's research, published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, offers a possible answer as to how these molecules formed there and could improve understanding of how worlds like Earth can form. Mebel and collaborator Ralf Kaiser of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa studied phenalene, the complex carbon molecule recently discovered in Taurus Molecular Cloud-1.

PAHs have been discovered in samples collected from asteroids and returned to Earth.

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