Astronomers have identified the sugar erythrulose in the interstellar medium for the first time, marking the most complex sugar ever found in deep space and suggesting that key ingredients for life may be present across the galaxy.
The four-carbon sugar was detected in dust cloud G+0.693-0.027, near the centre of the Milky Way, by a team led by Dr. Izaskun Jiménez-Serra using two Spanish radio telescopes. While sugars have previously been found in meteorites and on asteroid Bennu, this is the first detection directly in interstellar space. Researchers believe erythrulose can form from glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol on microscopic dust grains at temperatures around -250°C.
The findings, published Monday in Nature Astronomy, estimate that millions of tonnes of the sugar may have rained down on Earth during the Late Heavy Bombardment, potentially seeding the planet with prebiotic material.