Space Sugar Discovered In Binary System Star

Posted by timothy on Saturday September 1, 2012 @11:10PM from the sweetness-and-light dept.

SchrodingerZ writes "Sweet tooths rejoice! 400 light years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus, sugar molecules have been confirmed in a gas cloud surrounding a young star. The star, IRAS 16293-2422, though early in its life is relativity close to the size of our Sun. It is part of a Binary star system. '"In the disk of gas and dust surrounding this newly formed star, we found glycolaldehyde, which is a simple form of sugar, not much different to the sugar we put in coffee," study lead author Jes Jorgensen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, said in a statement.' Glycolaldehyde has been found before in space, but never this close to a Sun-like planet. In fact 'the molecules are about the same distance away from the star as the planet Uranus is from our sun.' This discovery proves that the building blocks of life could have possibly existed in the earlier parts of our own solar system. This particular sugar reacts with propenal to form ribose, which is a major component for organic life on Earth."

4 of 94 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Sweet! by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2012-09-01 23:14 · Score: 2, Funny

The creationists will need something to sugar the pill.

--
Ezekiel 23:20
1. Re:Sweet! by MysteriousPreacher · 2012-09-01 23:54 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  God spilt the sugar when he was making tea in Russell's Teapot.
  
  --
  -- Using the preview button since 2005
Re:Not actually sweet by Gryle · 2012-09-02 01:15 · Score: 3, Funny

Damn, and I was looking forward to the first interstellar Moon Pies, Star Crunches, and Cosmic Brownies!

--
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Yay! by greyblack · 2012-09-02 01:35 · Score: 3, Funny

Just need some yeast and we'll have one hell of a party star!

--
Everybody uses broad generalizations.