Cold Sugar Cloud Found in Space

Roland Piquepaille writes "A cloud filled with simple molecules of sugar has been found 26,000 light-years away from us, near the middle of our galaxy. The 8-atom sugar molecules exist in a gas cloud named Sagittarius B2 at a temperature of only 8 degrees above absolute zero. Too far and too cold to bake your next cake! However, even if chemistry reactions on Earth and in this frigid sugar cloud are very different, astronomers think this discovery "suggests how the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life could first form in interstellar space." Please read the original article for more details or just enjoy these illustrations describing how prebiotic chemistry -- the formation of the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life -- occurs in interstellar clouds."

Comments

That's because it's a Roland Piquepaille article.

[Ayanami Rei]

Most people agree Roland "Fuckeyfacey" Piquepaille's Technology Trends is a bullshit website.

Yet we keep seeing it linked from Slashdot.

I wouldn't mind if someone stole the content of Roland's article, removed the bullshit, added some more informative links, and then pretended to have stumbled across whatever it was, and posted it to Slashdot.

But I wish they would stop accepting submissions from him. He is just shitting all over slashdot for referral ad money.

Re:Good science or showboating quote?

[kalidasa]

This sugar (glycoaldehyde) + a 3 carbon sugar = ribose = a building block of deoxyribonucleic acid. See the original link

Re:How did they detect this?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you use a telescope to determine the MOLECULAR structure of an interstellar cloud???

Same way you determine the molecular structure of a compound sitting on the lab bench. Molecular structure is usually detemined by spectroscopy - looking at the electromagnetic radiation the compound absorbs/emits. (What - you thought we used a BIG microscope?) They probably looked at the spectrum of the cloud, and saw charachteristic wavelengths missing and/or present, and concluded that it was due to the presence of the "sugar" molecule.

BTW: The "sugar" molecule they found is glycolaldehyde. While technically a sugar from a chemist's point of view [it obeys the C(n)H(2n)O(n) rule - here n=2], it would hardly be considered a sugar from a biochemist's or nutritionist's one. It's only a two carbon molecule, and isn't even on any of the normal metabolism paths. Although there probably is a bacteria that can digest it (bacteria can digest practically anything) this "sugar" would probably be non-nutrative - if anything it would give you gas.

Oh ... and in case anyone is wondering, yes, I *am* a biochemist.