In a groundbreaking discovery, astronomers have detected a natural sugar that is also found in raspberries and self-tanners. The sugar called erythrulose, lurks in what’s called the interstellar medium thin clouds of gas and dust scattered amidst the stars.
The intriguing breakthrough shows for the first time that compounds that are fundamental to life can develop in the immensity between stars and fuels optimism that other molecules significant for the origins of life might be found in space.
A research team at Spain’s Center for Astrobiology detected the sugar, called erythrulose, which is made of four carbon atoms.
Sugars play a crucial role in living systems, perfect for providing the resources to build biological structures and form parts of genetic material such as RNA and DNA. To conduct the investigation, the team used two radio telescopes: one at the Yebes Observatory north of Madrid and the other at the Institute for Radio Astronomy in the Millimeter Range known as IRAM.
The teams headed in the Sierra Nevada in southern Spain to study a molecular cloud known as G+0.693-0.027 near the center of the galaxy.
Isaskun Jimenez-Serra, an astronomer at the Center for Astrobiology said: “This finding was unexpected as the prevailing view in astrochemistry is that interstellar molecules grow in size through the sequential addition of carbon atoms.”
According to researchers, the sugar was identified by its spectral signature in the radio wave data from the molecular cloud with the wavelength pattern for erythrulose being empirically validated.
The team originally explored simple sugars with three carbons but didn’t find anything. Isaskun Jimenez-Serra further explained that our discovery demonstrates that relatively complex sugars can already be Cosmo chemically formed in the interstellar medium before stars and planets are born.
The study further suggests that erythrulose can be made from simpler molecules on icy dust grains in space and may integrate into more complex chemical systems. The study noted that scientists have detected more than 340 molecules and gases of the Milky Way’s interstellar space but previously had detected no sugars.
Scientists have long been curious how sugar molecules first formed on Earth as lab experiments have shown they do not generate easily under the extreme conditions previously thought to exist in the Priscoan period.
Earlier studies that found sugars like ribose and glucose in primitive meteorites and in samples collected from an asteroid collected in 2020 suggested to researchers that some sugars may have originated in space.
Researchers in molecular evolution at the Spanish National Research Council, Carlos Briones said in a statement: “The detection of erythrulose is very exciting because it opens up the possibility of discovering in space other sugars such as ribose, which is part of RNA, and other important molecules for the origin of life.”
