Recent research is coming to the conclusion that, during specific parts of their life-cycle, stars generate large amounts of organic matter and send them careening through the interstellar medium. This is a huge new piece of information to finding the beginnings of life on Earth. For a time now, it has been believed that life on Earth was seeded by meteorites containing the necessary building blocks for life. How those compounds showed up on space rocks has been a big open question in the theory.
Researchers at the University of Honk Kong have been scanning the infrared spectrum of stars at various life-cycle stages. What they have found is that large amounts of complex organic compounds, such as petroleum, are being ejected from stars during their later dying phases after the red giant phase. As the outer shell of the star is shed, the inner core is exposed allowing huge amounts of ionizing radiation to escape and interact with the nearby star debris. This solar wind pushes the dust out, creating a nebula. Somewhere in here, either with the radiation interacting with fusion byproducts or with any of the number of complex processes of a dying star, large amounts of complex organic matter are generated rapidly. It was believed that these compounds could only be formed in the presence of life but these observations imply that dying stars can produce them as well. Not only do they just produce them but they produce them in huge quantities at a rapid pace and sling them out into the interstellar dust.
If they are right, this means that necessary building blocks for life can literally be everywhere there is dust in the galaxy. Now it is just a matter of finding a place, possibly like Earth, where life can take hold.
Read more: http://www.space.com/13401-cosmic-star-dust-complex-organic-compounds.html
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