STUNNING PREDICTION. “On the nature of interstellar grains (1979), by F. Hoyle & C. Wickramasinghe. ”
““The strongest of the diffuse interstellar bands are provisionally assigned to carotenoid-chlorophyll pigment complexes such as exist in algae and pigmented bacteria. The λ2200 Å interstellar absorption feature could be due to ‘degraded’ cellulose strands which form spherical graphitic particles, but could equally well be due to protein-lipid-nucleic acid complexes in bacteria and viruses. Interstellar extinction at wavelengths λ<1800 Å could be due to scattering by virus particles.”
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