Sweet! Sugar Found in Raspberries Was Discovered Near the Milky Way's Center
mrpg writes:
Hinting that life's ingredients are common in space:
Interstellar space just got a little sweeter: A type of sugar called erythrulose has been found near the center of the Milky Way, according to a new study.
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.
Erythrulose, which is made up of four carbon atoms, is also found in raspberries. Its interstellar presence was confirmed by the Yebes 40-meter and IRAM 30-meter radio telescopes in Spain, the research team reported Monday (July 13) in the journal Nature Astronomy. The signal of erythrulose was confirmed with patterns measured in the laboratory.
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 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," Jimenez-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."
Journal Reference: Jimenez-Serra, I., Garcia de la Concepcion, J., Cuppen, H.M. et al. Detection of a four-carbon sugar in interstellar space. Nat Astron (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02905-7
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