NEW YORK (AP) — The cosmos has just become a tad sweeter.
Scientists have unearthed a type of sugar floating in space, which is also found in raspberries and used in self-tanning lotions. Known as erythrulose, this sugar resides within the interstellar medium—these are sparse clouds of gas and dust scattered among the stars.
Sugars, beyond adding flavor to our desserts and drinks, play a crucial role in fueling our cells and constructing DNA. Understanding how these sugars originate is essential for scientists since they are fundamental building blocks for life.
Employing two dish-shaped radio telescopes located in Spain, scientists gathered information from a massive gas cloud situated near our galaxy’s heart, the Milky Way. To pinpoint the sugar in its gaseous state, they compared the telescope data with laboratory samples. This marks the latest detection of space-bound sugars in an area explored by NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft, which have ventured farther from Earth than any other probes.
The findings were published on Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Scientists have found interesting chemistry in our galaxy, including building blocks for genetic material and parts of the cell. They spotted a cousin to table sugar near the center of the Milky Way about 25 years ago, and black grains from asteroid Bennu retrieved by NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft yielded other sugars, including a key DNA ingredient.
The latest sugar isn’t essential for life, but can easily convert to a form that’s thought to be crucial to kick-starting life on Earth. And it’s one of the most complex sugars spotted so far, said astrophysicist Erika Hamden with the University of Arizona.
It’s “a pristine example of the stuff that’s just floating out in the galaxy,” said Hamden, who had no role in the new research.
These interstellar investigations are all about understanding how life got started. Did faraway comets or space rocks deliver the essential ingredients to us? Or were the essential components already here that eventually gave rise to our solar system?
The new sugar lends evidence to the latter theory. Researchers want to look for more sugars in space and learn about how they convert to different forms.
Finding them in one spot means they’re likely also hiding in distant corners of the galaxy along with other important bits, said study author Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrobiology in Spain.
“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.