We present a new investigation of the habitability of the Milky Way bulge, that expands previous studies on the Galactic Habitable Zone. We discuss existing knowledge on the abundance of planets in the bulge, metallicity and the possible frequency of rocky planets, orbital stability and encounters, and the possibility of planets around the central supermassive black hole. We focus on two aspects that can present substantial differences with respect to the environment in the disk: (i) the ionizing radiation environment, due to the presence of the central black hole and to the highest rate of supernovae explosions and (ii) the efficiency of putative lithopanspermia mechanism for the diffusion of life between stellar systems. We use analytical models of the star density in the bulge to provide estimates of the rate of catastrophic events and of the diffusion timescales for life over interstellar distances.

Galactic Habitability is a concept of growing popularity. So far, research has been done in understanding the temporal and spatial evolution of a Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ) based on parameters such as local SN rate, host star metallicity, and age of the system. However, the popular GHZ literature does not account for the potential influence of molecular complexity at different spatial locations in the Galaxy. With the high sensitivity of ALMA, we are interested in exploring molecular complexity of star-forming clumps in these different spatial locations of the Galaxy. In this work, we focus on one complex organic molecule -Formamide (NH 2 CHO) -which recent literature has identified as a potential key precursor to prebiotic life. Using ALMA archival data, we examine the presence and abundance of formamide at various galactocentric distances in the Galaxy. Several archival surveys were utilized for the search. Most extensively, we used the ALMA Three-millimeter Observations of Massive Star-forming regions (ATOMS) survey, to search for 7(0,7) → 6(1,6) transition of Formamide.