The detection, made in a gas cloud called G+0.693-0.027, is the first time this sugar has been found outside the solar system and adds to research identifying similar life-friendly ingredients around our galaxy, such as water.
While space researchers often focus on water and carbon when searching for the ingredients of life, sugars are also essential. "Sugars are important molecules in living systems, helping to provide energy, build important biological structures, and form parts of genetic material," the researchers said in a statement.
Finding erythrulose, he added, "is particularly relevant for the field of origins of life" because that sugar changes the configuration of threose — yet another sugar which is believed to be the precursor of the first nucleic acids that evolved into RNA and DNA.
The Milky Way rises during a clear summer night over a radio telescope from the Yebes Observatory. (Image credit: Marcos del Mazo via Getty Images)Sugar, space, and everything nice
Previously, scientists could not figure out how erythrulose could be made in conditions simulating the early Earth. That's because lab experiments "yield insufficient concentrations" of erythrulose on the surface of prebiotic (pre-life) Earth, the researchers explained.
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The sweet detection adds further evidence to the theory that many, if not all, of the essential ingredients of life are plentiful in space.
"One of the most exciting next steps is to search for even more complex sugars and for molecules that are direct precursors of RNA, and other biologically important compounds," Jiménez-Serra told Live Science. "We want to understand how far prebiotic chemistry can progress before planets are even formed, and what chemical inventory young planetary systems inherit from interstellar space."
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