In a sweet discovery, astronomers find sugar lurking in the space between stars

This Dec. 2023 photo provided by Pablo de Vicente shows a radio telescope at Yebes Observatory in Yebes, Spain. (Pablo de Vicente via AP)

NEW YORK — The space between stars just got a little sweeter.

Astronomers have detected a type of sugar in space that’s also found in raspberries and self-tanners. The sugar, called erythrulose, lurks in what’s called the interstellar medium: thin clouds of gas and dust littered between stars.

Sugar does more than sweeten tea and powder doughnuts. Different varieties fuel our cells and even make up DNA. Scientists are itching to know how sugars form because they’re a key ingredient for life as we know it.

Using two dish-shaped radio telescopes in Spain, researchers collected data from a large gas cloud near the center of the Milky Way. They identified the sugar in gas form by comparing telescope signals to samples in the lab. It’s the latest kind of sugar detected in space — in a region crossed by NASA’s twin Voyager, the farthest spacecraft to ever travel from Earth.

The results were published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Scientists have found interesting chemistry in our galaxy, including building blocks for genetic material and parts of the cell. They spotted a cousin to table sugar near the center of the Milky Way about 25 years ago, and black grains from asteroid Bennu retrieved by NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft yielded other sugars, including a key DNA ingredient.

The latest sugar isn’t essential for life, but can easily convert to a form that’s thought to be crucial to kick-starting life on Earth. And it’s one of the most complex sugars spotted so far, said astrophysicist Erika Hamden with the University of Arizona.

It’s “a pristine example of the stuff that’s just floating out in the galaxy,” said Hamden, who had no role in the new research.

These interstellar investigations are all about understanding how life got started. Did faraway comets or space rocks deliver the essential ingredients to us? Or were the essential components already here that eventually gave rise to our solar system?

The new sugar lends evidence to the latter theory. Researchers want to look for more sugars in space and learn about how they convert to different forms.

Finding them in one spot means they’re likely also hiding in distant corners of the galaxy along with other important bits, said study author Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrobiology in Spain.

“The key ingredients for the origin of life could be present in other regions across the galaxy, opening the possibility for life to develop elsewhere in the universe,” Jiménez-Serra said.

Adithi Ramakrishnan, The Associated Press