Dr. Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, the lead radio astronomer on a recent study, and additional scientists on her team have definitively discovered a sugar in interstellar space. This is so exciting, and it unlocks new questions as well.
Jiménez-Serra and her team found erythrulose, a type of sugar made of four carbon atoms, eight hydrogen atoms, and four oxygen atoms. More specifically, this is the same sugar that is found in raspberries.
Now, you might wonder how someone could find a sugar in space?
Dr. Jiménez-Serra and her team used radio telescopes to detect characteristic radio signals from molecules in the interstellar medium — the enormous clouds of gas and dust between solar systems in the Milky Way. As molecules rotate, they emit or absorb radio waves at specific frequencies. After collecting those signals, the team compared them with laboratory measurements of known molecules right here on earth. It turned out there was a clear match — erythrulose.
Sugars are among the essential building blocks of life. Scientists have previously discovered sugars on asteroids, and some have wondered whether certain sugars became part of our own planet when asteroids collided with Earth. But that still leaves a question: How did those asteroids acquire sugars in the first place?
This is the first time erythrulose has been detected in the interstellar medium itself.
Could this be a nursery for some of life’s building blocks? It invites all kinds of wonder.
—Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 