Interstellar sugar found in a galactic cloud hints at life’s origins

Astronomers detected erythrulose, a true four-carbon sugar, in a molecular cloud near the Milky Way’s center—the first such sugar found in interstellar space. The discovery suggests sugars can form naturally in space and could supply feedstock for nucleic acids, potentially seeding early life on planets via comets or asteroids. The finding, reported in Nature Astronomy, builds on prior sugar detections in meteorites and asteroid samples and raises the possibility that sugars crucial to RNA/DNA chemistry could originate in space.