Astronomers have found a type of sugar drifting through the Milky Way. This is the same chemical that appears in raspberries and self-tanning lotions.
Scientists detected the sugar erythrulose in the interstellar medium. These are the huge, thin clouds of gas and dust that float between stars.
Most people think of sugar as something that sweetens coffee or doughnuts, but it also powers living cells and helps build DNA. Because of this, sugar is a basic building block of life. Scientists study how these organic molecules form in deep space to better understand how life could begin.
Presence of Erythrulose
A study published Monday in Nature Astronomy describes how researchers in Spain used two radio telescopes to observe a massive gas cloud near the galaxy’s center. They matched the telescope signals with lab samples and confirmed that erythrulose was present in the gas.
This region is so far away that NASA’s Voyager probes, which are the most distant human-made objects from Earth, once traveled through its outer edges.
Astronomers have found other complex organic chemicals in space before, including components of genetic material. About 25 years ago, they discovered a simple sugar similar to table sugar near the center of the galaxy. More recently, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission brought back asteroid samples that contained sugars connected to DNA.
Not Essential But…
Erythrulose is not essential for life on its own. However, it can easily change into a sugar that might have been important in the early development of life on Earth.
“It’s a pristine example of the stuff that’s just floating out in the galaxy,” said astrophysicist Erika Hamden at the University of Arizona, who was not involved in the study.
Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, one of the study’s authors from the Center for Astrobiology in Spain, said this discovery broadens the chances for life beyond Earth. “The key ingredients for the origin of life could be present in other regions across the galaxy, opening the possibility for life to develop elsewhere in the universe,” Jiménez-Serra said.
