Well,a kind of sugar,at least (Picture: Metro)
So far,the only life that seems to exist anywhere is on Earth.
But astronomers have discovered a clue that could explain why life exists on the blue marble – and it’s all down to sugar floating in a cloud of cosmic dirt.
Sugar in its various forms is the ancient fuel for our DNA and the tiny molecule found in space,erythrulose,is found in raspberries,melons and even self-tanning lotions.
So does this mean a raspberry bush in interstellar space is the origin of life? Probably not,the paper published in Nature Astronomy says.
‘It is not uncommon to spot molecules in this part of space,‘ Dr David Benoit,a molecular physicist at the University of Hull,who was not involved in the study,tells Metro.
‘But this is one of the first times this type of sugar has been found out there.’
Scientists have long been scratching their heads,trying to work out where the sugar came from. A main theory has been that it came to Earth on a meteorite.
Experts peered into the Milky Way to find the space jam ingredient (Picture: Shutterstock/Belish)
They haven’t even been able to recreate the chemical conditions to make sugar in a lab,making it even more puzzling why it’s on our planet.
Ribose,a larger sugar,was discovered inside an asteroid last year.
Researchers from Spain’s Centre for Astrobiology near Madrid found the sugar in G+0.693−0.027,a thin cloud of gas and dust littered between stars in the Milky Way called an interstellar medium.
The team pointed two powerful radio telescopes at the nebula,about 27,000 light-years from Earth,to see what frequencies it was pinging.
When molecules spin and dance,they produce unique frequencies.
And,inside this mess of dust and gases in between solar systems,they found something made of four carbon atoms,eight hydrogen atoms and four oxygen atoms – erythrulose.
The sugar the team found in the cosmos (Picture: Nature Astronomy)
The team admits they checked the results over and over again,in part,because they couldn’t believe they found a cosmic bag of sugar.
What’s interesting about the discovery is that it shows sugar can form without life,even before stars or planets form.
So it suggests there’s a good chance that life on Earth originated from somewhere else.
Erythrulose,the paper says,forms when two other organic compounds,glycolaldehyde and ethylene,clump together.
‘This process is statistically rare,considering how big space is,but tiny “dust grains” help make these meetings more likely by creating little islands where molecules congregate,’ says Dr Benoit.
‘Sugars are essential components of living organisms and thus finding complex organic molecules linked to life “building blocks” in space can help further explain where our chemistry comes from.’
Researchers estimated that up to 500,000,000kg of sugar could have wound up on Earth as it was forming billions of years ago.
This sugar could have sparked the chemical reactions needed to form life some 4.1 billion years ago,if some fossils of microbes are to be believed.
Other building blocks include carbon,water and nitrogen.
‘A random combination of these,’ Dr Benoit adds,‘could have ultimately led to primitive self-replicating systems.’
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