A sweet spot in space

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By ScienceAdvisor. 

Excerpt: Victory is sweet for astronomers, who have just discovered the presence of a sugar molecule in interstellar space—a discovery that may have implications for the origin of life. The molecule, erythrulose, is also found on Earth in raspberries and self-tanner. ...researchers observed a large cloud of gas and dust called G+0.693–0.027, located about 27,000 light-years from Earth, using ...radio waves, which can pass through gas and dust and reveal information about the molecules within. ...Erythrulose isn’t the first sugar to be detected outside Earth, as samples from meteorites and the asteroid Bennu have shown ribose and glucose. But the new, more complex sugar is the first to be detected in interstellar space—and a further sign of how the carbon-rich building blocks of genetic material could have first formed in space. “We have been waiting for an actual detection like this,” geochemist Yoshihiro Furukawa, who was not involved in the study, told The Guardian. “Sugars formed in the interstellar medium can reach Earth and other planets via cometary dust … This supply may have helped facilitate the emergence of life.”... 


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