Scientists Find Sugar Deep In Our Galaxy (apnews.com) 44
Astronomers have detected erythrulose, a sugar found in raspberries and self-tanners, in a gas cloud near the center of the Milky Way. While not essential for life itself, the molecule can convert into a form thought to be important for life's origins, adding evidence that key prebiotic ingredients may be widespread across the galaxy. The Associated Press reports: Using two dish-shaped radio telescopes in Spain, researchers collected data from a large gas cloud near the center of the Milky Way. They identified the sugar in gas form by comparing telescope signals to samples in the lab. It's the latest kind of sugar detected in space -- in a region crossed by NASA's twin Voyager, the farthest spacecraft to ever travel from Earth.
Scientists have found interesting chemistry in our galaxy, including building blocks for genetic material and parts of the cell. They spotted a cousin to table sugar near the center of the Milky Way about 25 years ago, and black grains from asteroid Bennu retrieved by NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft yielded other sugars, including a key DNA ingredient. The latest sugar isn't essential for life, but can easily convert to a form that's thought to be crucial to kick-starting life on Earth. And it's one of the most complex sugars spotted so far, said astrophysicist Erika Hamden with the University of Arizona. The results were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Scientists have found interesting chemistry in our galaxy, including building blocks for genetic material and parts of the cell. They spotted a cousin to table sugar near the center of the Milky Way about 25 years ago, and black grains from asteroid Bennu retrieved by NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft yielded other sugars, including a key DNA ingredient. The latest sugar isn't essential for life, but can easily convert to a form that's thought to be crucial to kick-starting life on Earth. And it's one of the most complex sugars spotted so far, said astrophysicist Erika Hamden with the University of Arizona. The results were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The heck did they need a radiotelecope for? (Score:2)
The ingredients are listed on the wrapper!
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Is that how the holographic principle works??
Sugar! (Score:2)
Where are the space ants? /s
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I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords
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Bow down to me as your overlord. Fetch me those sugar.
Re: Sugar! (Score:2)
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Mmmm, sweet h2o!
Known this for our Solar system since the 1980ies (Score:2)
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The fact that amino acids and other chemicals used by earth based biology can form fairly readily has been known since the Miller-Urey experiment in the 1950s, this isn't news. The problem is there's a big gap between biologically active chemicals and biology itself, specifically a molecule that can replicate, evolve will a surrounding framework of chemistry. We don't yet know if THAT can spontaniously evolve anywhere or needs to very particular conditions that happened to exist on earth after it formed.
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That same argument "shows" life could not begin on any other planet or gas blob and so could not have evolved; so either the Flying Spaghetti Monster started it or, using a bit of non-wellfounded set theory, was always here from infinity ago.
Let's assume it was the Flying Spaghetti Monster, then he clearly hates us or he wouldn't have filled the universe with dangerous radiation, or built the universe to play billiards with the Earth and asteroids, or put snakes in the grass (thanks Ian Anderson).
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Good stuff?
Like a globally ridiculed orange man baby for a president who's fcuked up just about everything he's touched?
It's hilarious and tragic; maybe that is a kind of good.
Muslims might say, God willed Donald Trump to be president of US.
Bhuddists might say , the conditions were right.
Mr T would blame the crazy fools.
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Well America is the single richest country the world has even know with the most powerful military to have ever existed.
And you are on the downside. The Egyptian, Roman, Ottoman, and British empires say hi.
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Well America is the single richest country the world has even know with the most powerful military to have ever existed.
There are other ways to define "good stuff" besides wealth and military prowess. For example: happiness, safety from crime, quality of life, livability of cities and other municipal areas, access to education and health care, security in a person's senior years, and so on. It's no secret that the USA has not scored nearly as highly as other countries in those areas.
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The point is that America did not get all the "good stuff" as the AC(s) above claimed. It's irrelevant whether any Muslim countries got any of it.
Re: Known this for our Solar system since the 1980 (Score:1)
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Actually, we're pretty sure it CAN happen by random chance. The argument is about how small that chance is...and what environmental conditions give the highest probability. And in what order things happened. (Currently I, not really knowledgeable in the field, think metabolism probably came before centralized information storage.)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] -- we are all made of star poop
Old news (Score:2)
Well-known fact since Edgar the Bug.
That's it, I'm leaving (Score:5, Funny)
Of course (Score:2)
Sugar In The Milkyway (Score:5, Funny)
Milkways are indeed super sweet. They have a lot of sugar in them.
It might cause diabetes but they are soooooo good.
Re:Sugar In The Milkyway (Score:4, Funny)
Mars also has a large amounts of sugar, and we're more likely to get there in our lifetime!
Re: Sugar In The Milkyway (Score:2)
I'm more of a Baby Ruth fan, but they renamed it and changes the recipe so it is basically extinct.
In addition (Score:4, Funny)
What really happened. (Score:2)
Shit. I've accidentally dropped some doughnut crumbs onto the lens. Quick! Let's erase the entry log and pretend I haven't been here today.
Voyager made it into the center of the milky way? (Score:3, Interesting)
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No, you're not the only one. Those two sentences definitely are seemingly contradictory. They're in TFA also, with no additional explanation.
I'll guess the author meant the sugar was detected in a region of the sky in the same direction (not location) as Voyager.
thought form. (Score:2)
In this crazy timeline, nursery rhymes are REAL (Score:2)
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Giant (Score:2)
Sweet! (Score:1)
Sweet! (Score:1)
That explains it! (Score:2)
Well, they do say the Universe is expanding... now we know why - Galactic Sugar is everywhere.
Found in the Raspberry Pie Nebula (Score:1)