Astronomers find sugar near the creamy center of the Milky Way (no caramel, though)

SCIENCE

First interstellar monosaccharide suggests some of life's ingredients may be scattered across the galaxy

Scientists have detected a sugar in interstellar space, suggesting the galaxy may be liberally sprinkled with some of life's chemical ingredients.

A new study shows that a sugar molecule containing four carbon atoms, called erythrulose, has been found near the center of the Milky Way, the first confirmed detection of a monosaccharide in the interstellar medium.

Living organisms use sugars as energy sources, structural components, and constituents of genetic material. While scientists have previously found ribose and glucose in meteorite and asteroid samples, indicating they also exist in space, monosaccharide forms of sugar in deep space had remained elusive – if we're not counting glycolaldehyde, which is often loosely described as the simplest sugar, or a sugar precursor.

Astrobiology researcher Izaskun Jiménez-Serra and her colleagues found the sugar in large clouds of gas and dust near the center of our galaxy using ultrasensitive spectral surveys performed by Spain's Yebes 40-meter and IRAM 30-meter radio telescopes.

The researchers identified the sugar compound by matching 12 sets of signals in the survey data with erythrulose's laboratory-measured spectral signature.

"Erythrulose appears to be at least eight times more abundant than analogous three-carbon sugars, which remain undetected in our ultrasensitive observations," says the paper, published in Nature Astronomy this week.

Quantum chemical and astrochemical models indicate that erythrulose forms efficiently on interstellar dust grains from simpler two-carbon molecules, the study found.

The researchers say the findings suggest that erythrulose can be made from simpler molecules on dust grains in space, eventually becoming part of more complex chemical systems.

"The discovery of interstellar erythrulose suggests that the interstellar medium could be a viable source of sugar feedstock for the prebiotic synthesis of the first nucleic acids, not only on the primitive Earth but also elsewhere in the Universe," the paper states.

While the discovery of sugars in deep space may be tantalizing for any budding explorers of the galaxy, there's no need to travel that far to find erythrulose. It occurs naturally on Earth, including in raspberries. ®