Astronomers have detected erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar, in the interstellar medium. Izaskun Jiménez-Serra and colleagues published the finding in Nature Astronomy, using the 40-meter radio telescope at Yebes and the 30-meter radio telescope at Granada to identify the molecule's spectral signature inside a molecular cloud near the Milky Way's galactic center.
The sugar most likely forms on interstellar dust grains through reactions between two-carbon aldehydes and alcohols. That matters because erythrulose is a plausible energy source for early metabolic processes, making it a candidate precursor in abiogenesis models that require asteroid or interstellar seeding of Earth's primitive atmosphere. The molecule is also abundant in Earth's fruits, which raises a question the paper does not fully resolve.
The full paper is worth reading for its spectroscopic methodology and the specific molecular cloud data. The detection extends a growing inventory of complex organic molecules found in space, and the authors' discussion of formation pathways on dust grain surfaces is where the real argument for prebiotic relevance lives.
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