Researchers found a four-carbon sugar called erythrulose in a cloud of gas and dust at the centre of the Milky Way (image from Spitzer Space Telescope shown here).Credit: NASA, Caltech, Susan Stolovy (SSC, Caltech) Call it an extra-sweet discovery. A group of astronomers has detected a sugar molecule swirling inside a cloud of gas and dust near the centre of our galaxy. They are calling the molecule ' a compound with four carbon atoms called erythrulose ' the first true sugar spotted in 'interstellar' space. The findings, reported today in the journal Nature Astronomy1, could help clarify how life on Earth began. 'This is an incredibly exciting result,' says Brett McGuire, an astrochemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. 'Astronomers have, for a very long time, been pushing to detect sugars in space.' That's because they've already seen hints that sugars on Earth that are essential to life originated in outer space. For instance, the five-carbon sugar...
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