A group of scientists have made a sweet discovery after identifying naturally occurring sugar in the heart of the Milky Way, offering a sprinkling of new insight into the origins of life on Earth.
According to a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the findings provide a clue to the source of the life-sustaining compound and how its vital presence came to be in all living things.
Sugar’s inception on Earth has proven a longstanding mystery to researchers, who knew it must have been present in the early days of the cosmos, given life’s reliance on it, but whose attempts to recreate the chemical conditions that would have led to its emergence have largely fallen short, the study says.
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Scientists believe sugar may have been present on asteroids and comets that struck Earth during the primitive age of the solar system, as several types of it have been detected on asteroids and meteorites, according to the study, but the chemical’s source prior to that was unknown.
Now, a group of astrochemists led by Izaskun Jiménez-Serra at the Center for Astrobiology in Spain says it has cracked the conundrum after identifying erythrulose — a sugar naturally occurring in raspberries and used in fake tan products — drifting in what is known as the interstellar medium (ISM), an expanse of dust and gas that fills the space between star systems within a galaxy.
The sugar was detected in the galactic centre region of the Milky Way — meaning close to the centre, where there is a dense concentration of gases and stars — about 26,700 light years from Earth.
The interstellar medium “is an impressive chemical factory,” the authors of the study wrote, noting that hundreds of compounds have already been found there, including origin-of-life molecules believed to be the building blocks of RNA, a nucleic acid present in all living things.
Laboratory experiments outlined in the study indicated that the sugar found could have formed in chemical reactions in ice deep in the ISM.
Jiménez-Serra and her colleagues used powerful telescopes to observe the frequencies emitted by molecules moving around in the ISM. By comparing those to the frequencies of the same compounds in a lab, the team could identify what molecules were bouncing around in the centre of the galaxy. This is how they found erythrulose.
“It was this very beautiful match,” Jiménez-Serra told the New York Times, “my heart started beating very, very fast.”
Assistant professor Brett McGuire, an astrochemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study, told the U.S. outlet that the team’s rigorous and extensive analysis of their findings “supports their conclusion that the molecule is there.”
“They went to extraordinary lengths to account for all possible interlopers,” he said.
The study confirms that sugar can form in harsh interstellar conditions, without the presence of life and before the emergence of stars and planets, providing further insight into how such chemicals come into existence and suggesting that many other molecules important to the emergence of life may also be present in the celestial reaches of outer space.
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