Astronomers have detected a type of sugar called erythrulose in the interstellar medium, the space between stars. This sugar is also found in raspberries and is used in self-tanning products. The discovery was made using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, which observed the molecule in a region of star formation.
The research, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, adds to the growing list of organic molecules found in space. Erythrulose is a simple sugar related to ribose, a key component of RNA, suggesting that the building blocks of life may be more common in the universe than previously thought.
Lead author of the study, Dr. Michel Guélin from the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, stated that the detection of such molecules in space supports the idea that complex organic chemistry occurs naturally in interstellar clouds. The team used ALMA's high sensitivity to identify the unique spectral signature of erythrulose.
This finding does not imply that space is literally sweet, but it highlights the presence of prebiotic molecules that could have contributed to the origin of life on Earth. The sugar was found in a cloud near the center of the Milky Way, where conditions are similar to those when our solar system formed.
