It formed before a single star existed… how many more ingredients of life are we still missing? 🔭
A team led by Spanish astronomer Izaskun Jiménez-Serra found something never seen before in space: a real sugar called erythrulose, floating in a cloud of gas and dust near the center of the Milky Way.
🍓 That same compound is found in raspberries and even in the self-tanners you use in summer. But this time it appeared light-years away from any planet, in the molecular cloud G+0.693-0.027, detected with radio telescopes in Guadalajara and Sierra Nevada, Spain.
✨ Of the more than 340 molecules found to date in interstellar space, none had been a sugar of this type. The astonishing thing: it formed before stars or planets existed, suggesting that the ingredients of life could be spread throughout the universe.