Granulated, brown, powdered, pearl, cubed — there’s a lot of sugar on Earth. And surprisingly, there’s sugar in space, too. Researchers first discovered evidence of glycolaldehyde, a type of simple sugar, while looking for molecules in space that could support life. Glycolaldehyde is much less complex than cultivated Earth sugars, with only eight atoms compared to cane sugar’s 45. But when it’s found in space, researchers believe the stuff could play an important role in jump-starting life beyond our planet. That’s because glycolaldehyde can combine with a chemical called propenal to make ribose, a component of ribonucleic acid, which is similar to DNA and found in all living things. So far, glycolaldehyde has been found both in the interstellar gas cloud at the Milky Way’s center and in the gases surrounding a young star 400 light-years from Earth. |
