Sugar found in region crossed by Voyager spacecraft
Using two dish-shaped radio telescopes in Spain, researchers collected data from a large gas cloud located near the center of the Milky Way. They identified the erythrulose in gas form by comparing the telescope signals to samples in the lab.
The results were published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. The sugar, erythrulose, is found on Earth in raspberries and is used in self-tanning products.
The region of the galactic center where the sugar was detected has been crossed by NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft, the farthest human-made objects from Earth. The region is part of the interstellar medium — the thin clouds of gas and dust that fill the space between stars.
Sugars do more than sweeten food, the researchers noted. Different varieties fuel living cells and form part of the backbone of DNA, the molecule that carries genetic information. Understanding how sugars form in space could help scientists trace how the chemical building blocks of life reached Earth and other planets.
The detection is the latest kind of sugar found in space.