All articles tagged with #erythrulose
Astronomers detected erythrulose, a four‑carbon sugar, in a Milky Way molecular cloud using radio telescopes at Yebes and Granada, suggesting sugars can form on interstellar dust grains and potentially contribute energy for early metabolic processes relevant to the origins of life.
Astronomers detected erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar, in a Milky Way molecular cloud—the first sugar found in interstellar space—hinting that sugars and RNA-building blocks may be widespread in the cosmos, with estimates that up to 50 million tons could have rained down on early Earth to support prebiotic chemistry.
Astronomers have detected erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar, in a giant interstellar gas cloud near the Milky Way’s center, suggesting sugars are more common in space than previously thought and could seed prebiotic chemistry by enabling ribonucleotide formation, challenging the idea that sugars form only through gradual, carbon-by-carbon buildup.
Astronomers detected erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar, in the interstellar molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027 near the Milky Way’s center, based on data from Spain’s Yebes and IRAM telescopes and published in Nature Astronomy. This marks the first interstellar monosaccharide discovery and supports the idea that space-based chemistry can form prebiotic molecules that may have contributed to Earth’s origins, though it does not imply life elsewhere.
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.
Astronomers detected erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar, in a molecular cloud near the Milky Way’s center, showing that sugars can form in interstellar space and may seed planetary systems; observations from Yebes Observatory and IRAM identified the sugar’s spectral signature in G+0.693−0.027, with discussions that up to 0.5 million to 50 million metric tons could have been delivered to early Earth during the Late Heavy Bombardment, a debated period.
Astronomers have detected erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar, in a molecular cloud near the Milky Way’s center, marking the first true sugar found in interstellar space and supporting ideas that complex organic molecules crucial to life can form in space and may have been delivered to early Earth via comets and meteorites.
Astronomers directly detected erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar, in the Milky Way’s molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027 using Spain’s Yebes 40-meter and IRAM 30-meter telescopes. The sugar’s spectral fingerprint matched 12 lines, and erythrulose was found to be eight times more abundant than simpler sugars, revealing chemical complexity in space before stars or planets form and suggesting life-building blocks may pre-exist in star-forming clouds; researchers plan to search for larger sugars like ribose next.
Ultrasensitive broadband spectral surveys with the Yebes 40 m and IRAM 30 m telescopes led to the first detection of erythrulose, a four‑carbon ketose, in the interstellar medium toward the Galactic Centre cloud G+0.693−0.027. Erythrulose is at least 8–17 times more abundant than the undetected C3 sugars in this cloud, and its formation is explained by grain-surface chemistry combining glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol via fast hydrogen-abstracting reactions on icy dust grains, followed by an intersystem crossing to yield the chiral sugar. Astrophysical modeling (LTE fits and kinetic Monte Carlo simulations) reproduces its presence under typical Galactic Centre conditions, suggesting interstellar sugars could contribute to prebiotic inventories and potentially to the origin of biological homochirality on early Earth, linking ISM chemistry to meteoritic organics and solar-system material.
Astronomers detected erythrulose, a four‑carbon sugar, in a massive interstellar dust cloud (G+0.693-0.027) near the Milky Way’s center. The sugar forms on microscopic dust grains from glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol at around -250°C and could be delivered to planets via comets or meteorites. This marks the first direct detection of a sugar in interstellar space and suggests simple sugars important for life may be more common in the cosmos, potentially seeding early Earth during periods of heavy bombardment.