Scientists have discovered that when amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) freeze in water ice, they naturally clump together into tiny particles called nanoaggregates. Using a special glowing molecule as a detector, researchers directly observed these clumps for the first time using electron microscopes. This finding suggests that icy environments in space or on early Earth could have naturally concentrated amino acids and created the right conditions for them to link together into proteins, potentially contributing to the origin of life.