Pictured above is a stellar nursery in giant molecular cloud DR21 by Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera.  The infrared filaments actually glow because of organic compounds known as PAHs.

The compounds of carbon, excluding carbonates and carbon dioxide, are considered the building blocks of life on Earth. However, the idea that particles of inorganic dust taking a life of their own would mean that carbon-based molecules are not necessary. 

An international team has discovered that particles of inorganic dust in a plasma state can be organized into helical structures. These structures can then interact with each other the way organic compounds would - dividing and forming into two copies of the original structure. The plasma conditions needed to form these structures is common in space.

"These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter," says V.N. Tsytovich of the General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Science. "They are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve."

:: More at Science Daily