Slashdot Mirror
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."
Come on, somebody had to say it!
here
that that is is that that is not is not
What if the sugar molecules were formed on a planet first, and then swept up into space by a large asteroid or something? That seems very unlikely, but it's a possible scenario.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Is "suggests how the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life could first form in interstellar space." good science, or a showboating quote?
I ask because last I checked, "sugar" is hardly a "building block" of life. Proteins, sure, even amino acids which I think are a bit of a stretch in a way, but mere sugar? Sugar builds nothing and is only slightly more complicated than water, compared to even a simple protein, AFAICS.
Mmmmmmmmm.....interstellar doughnuts.....
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
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.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
a low-calorie version of the cloud has been found in another region of space, but exploration is out of the question because of the high aspartame content.
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.
Yes, it's in the Milky Way.
Our friend Roland must do nothing but sit around all day submitting articles on slashdot. I've never seen less than 1 per day, and I rarely read section stories. Amazing how he never forgets that link to his own spammy blog, isn't it?
I mean, goddamn. I expect ads, so editors, if he's paying for it, by all means put it up here. Just don't try to sneak it past us as a quasi-article, ok? With as many duplicate submissions as you guys must get, it's just impossible that it's not a covert ad.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt though. Just do us all a favor, and put him in a killfile. Let him post comments, I don't care... but the article submission is starting to grate on my nerves. Tell you what, do it, and I'll subscribe. I'm sure others will too.
the Alien Ant collony that lives nearby yet?
As the article mentions, the detection of glycolaldehyde is of interest because it is a precursor to ribose. We're not talking about metabolic processes here - we're talking about the availability of the very basic chemicals that formed the first nontrivially self-replicating collections of molecules.
Glycolaldehyde is also of interest because it is involved in an autocatalytic reaction that essentially converts formaldehyde into glycolaldehyde. As such, it is one of the most fundamental examples of self-replicating molecules. Certainly not nearly as complex as those seen in biology (prions, for example), but the fact that this reaction might take place in the depths of space is interesting - particularly when one considers the possibility of a glycolaldehyde/formaldehyde cloud entering the atmosphere of a planet such as Earth, where conditions are likely much better to sustain the autocatalytic reaction.
...This just. Intergalactic highway r-405-g, was brought to an atomic halt when a space trucker from Andromeda's Pure Cane Sugar (IG Stk: APCS) planet blew an airlock and 40million cubic meters of the sweet stuff was left over 38 light years. APCS has denied any wrong doing but said that clean efforts would begin immeadiately. The trucker in question was later found at the Orion Unemployment Office, Nebulous Division. When asked for comment, he stated "I don't know what happened! One minute I was cruisen at 30 parsecs the next thing kablooie!! Everything went nova! I think the IGPF [Intergalactic Police Force] said something about triffles or truffles or something like that." We will have further updates as they become available. In other news...
Your actions in life will determine your children's future.
The fact you got modded up to +3 goes to show just how few Slashdotters know much about astrophysics. This proposal is completely infeasible.
.785m^2. Multiply that by 4 * 10^16 meters and you get a total volume of roughly 3 * 10^16 cubic meters.
Take a cylinder a meter wide, from here to Alpha Centauri. Tally up how much matter is there inside of it. I would tell you just how little there is, but you wouldn't believe me, so let's go through the math so you know I'm not yanking your chain. On average, there's about one atom per cubic centimeter of space. Thus, in one cubic meter there's about 10^6 atoms.
One mole of hydrogen, with a mass of one gram, is 6.023 * 10^23 atoms.
One cubic meter of interstellar space has a mass of 1.6 * 10^-18 grams, or 1.6 * 10^-21 kilograms.
It's about four lightyears to Alpha Centauri, or 4 * 10^16 meters, approximately. So a cylinder a meter across would have a cross-section of quarter-pi square meters, or about
Multiply 3 * 10^16 cubic meters by 1.6 * 10^-21 kilograms per cubic meter and what do you get?
You get the total mass of all the matter in a cylinder from here to Alpha Centauri. Something on the order of a fraction of a gram. You leave orders of magnitude more matter in a Kleenex when you sneeze.
You may want to radically rethink your proposal for farming interstellar gas. There just ain't much of it out there.
a giant cloud of sugar in the middle of our galaxy, eh?
so if a supernova happened upon this cloud...might the milky way end up with a giant caramel center?
Well, you said "On average." In a nebula, isn't the average density of gas a *LOT* higher?
I am not an expert on this, but nebulas can be readily seen, so their density should be orders of magnitude more.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."