Sweet Discovery: Sugar from a Cosmic Cloud ✛ ✦
In the icy haze of the cloud at the center of the Galaxy, on tiny dust grains, a fragile crust of water ice grows. It's a miniature confectionery: atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, the simplest building blocks, spontaneously combine into sweet molecules. Thus, 27,000 light-years from Earth, astronomers 'heard' the signal of erythrulose — the sugar added to self-tanning creams.
Spectroscopy — a technique pioneered by Fraunhofer and transformed by Townes into a sensitive tool — made it possible to distinguish the chemical 'voice' of this substance. The idea that space synthesizes sugars without the involvement of planets was championed by Hoyle. Now confirmed: asteroids and comets can spread this sweetness to young exoplanets, perhaps nourishing future life.
Erythrulose, which gives a bronze tint in self-tanners, floats in an icy cloud 27,000 light-years from Earth.
Fred Hoyle, in his novel 'The Black Cloud', described a living interstellar cloud; the discovery of real sugars inside it adds scientific credence to this fantasy.