Sugar in Space: Another Step Towards Life’s Origins
The sugar was detected with radio telescopes and measured at least 8 times stronger than evidence for simpler three-carbon sugars, researchers said.
- In work published Monday in Nature Astronomy, a team from Spain's Center for Astrobiology reported finding the four-carbon sugar erythrulose in G+0.693−0.027, a molecular cloud near the Milky Way's center.
- Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, an astronomer at the Center for Astrobiology, said the finding was unexpected because "the prevailing view in astrochemistry is that interstellar molecules grow in size through the sequential addition of carbon atoms."
- Using the Yebes 40 meter telescope and IRAM 30 meter telescope, scientists identified an erythrulose signature at least 8 times stronger than evidence for any three-carbon sugar molecules.
- Mark Sephton, a professor in Imperial College London, said the discovery "strengthens suggestions that our solar system may have been seeded with pre-existing organic compounds," which serve as building blocks for DNA and RNA.
- Carlos Briones, a study coauthor at the Spanish National Research Council, noted the detection "opens up the possibility of discovering in space other sugars such as ribose, which is part of RNA," pointing toward future research directions.
15 Articles
15 Articles
For the first time, researchers have discovered real sugar in space, which could provide new evidence of the origin of life.
Sugar in space: another step towards life’s origins
Today, life on Earth is highly evolved, diverse, and complex. This tree of life illustrates the evolution and development of the various organisms on Earth. Although we all emerged from a common ancestor more than 2 billion years ago, the diverse forms of life emerged from a chaotic process that would not be exactly repeated even if we rewound and re-ran the clock trillions of times. As first realized by Darwin, many hundreds of millions, if no…
Science has just added a little softness to our understanding of our galaxy.
Spanish astronomers find a natural sugar near the Milky Way's center, lifting hopes for life's origins
Scientists have identified erythrulose, a sugar that occurs naturally in raspberries, in a dust-and-gas cloud near the Milky Way's center, offering fresh evidence that some life-linked compounds can arise in deep space. The result points to fairly advanced chemistry happening well before planets and any life on them come into existence. What happened? In work published Monday in Nature Astronomy, a team from Spain's Center for Astrobiology repor…
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