Abstract
If you needed ashes, wood ashes, for a particular project, where would you look, the fireplace or the freezer? This silly question is intended to heighten respect for the detective work of scientists who, in a sense, found ashes in the deep freeze. They discovered that certain simple molecules essential to formation of planets and life chemistry are produced in frigid gas clouds, at -441F (-263C). However, since low temperatures slow chemical reactions dramatically, they realized that an amazingly powerful catalyst, and plenty of it, must be present for these molecules to form.