Space Sugar Discovered In Binary System Star 94
SchrodingerZ writes "Sweet tooths rejoice! 400 light years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus, sugar molecules have been confirmed in a gas cloud surrounding a young star. The star, IRAS 16293-2422, though early in its life is relativity close to the size of our Sun. It is part of a Binary star system. '"In the disk of gas and dust surrounding this newly formed star, we found glycolaldehyde, which is a simple form of sugar, not much different to the sugar we put in coffee," study lead author Jes Jorgensen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, said in a statement.' Glycolaldehyde has been found before in space, but never this close to a Sun-like planet. In fact 'the molecules are about the same distance away from the star as the planet Uranus is from our sun.' This discovery proves that the building blocks of life could have possibly existed in the earlier parts of our own solar system. This particular sugar reacts with propenal to form ribose, which is a major component for organic life on Earth."
Sweet! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
God spilt the sugar when he was making tea in Russell's Teapot.
Re: (Score:1)
made a bum moderation, posting to undo
snake
Re: (Score:2)
Cheers. Nice username.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm not a sock puppet either, but we really should send the Italians off on that rocket as well.
Say hi to Laura
Not actually sweet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not actually sweet (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
His mention of "sweet tooths" jumping for joy is probably a joke. The trek to the fridge to fetch another tub of Chunky Munky seems nothing compared to a trip of several hundred light years.
See this article for additional guidance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
His mention of "sweet tooths" jumping for joy is probably a joke. The trek to the fridge to fetch another tub of Chunky Munky seems nothing compared to a trip of several hundred light years.
See this article for additional guidance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor [wikipedia.org]
Trek... space ... I see what you did there...
Re: (Score:3)
that sugar is from (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
You'd better not do that in high-sec space.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
So that's where all that maple syrup ended up! [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
destroyed sugar transport
Was it arriving or departing Earth? Damn space pirates!
Re: (Score:3)
As to cost, that system apparently costs more than a billion dollars. But I doubt that the system would have been the same order of magnitude, should one have developed it in 1970 (with the same capabilities as
Re: (Score:2)
Thing is though, you've still got to solve Problem B to do that, which equally probably wasn't trivial.
The point is that you were going to solve Problem B anyway. For example, I think we'll see a decline in the cost of space-based science missions just due to manufacture improvements on Earth (and eventually the entry of private charity into that endeavor).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Unfortunately, these sorts of results are not usually confirmed independently, you dalliant goatherder.
Reacts with propenal (Score:2)
To form ribose, which is necessary for life?
Yeah, but the propenal reaction is not exactly how "life" does [wikipedia.org] it.
Re:Reacts with propenal (Score:4, Interesting)
I feed my bacteria in the lab plenty of artificially synthesised compounds and they don't give a damn. Based on life as we know it, if it's availabe and it can use it then life will usually find some way of taking it up regardless of source.
The better question is do the chemicals react to form ribose under the conditions in space, or can they survive the transfer to somewhere they will react?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but the propenal reaction is not exactly how "life" does it.
Especially when it's not "life" yet. Got it?
NOW ALL WE NEED IS SOME SPACE TEA !! (Score:1)
with space ice, some space air (20% should do) and sure, why not, a few space girls, and we can have a space party like it's space 1999 !!
Imagine this... (Score:3)
...your average Brit, sitting there sipping his coffee or tea, listening to BBC morning news...
"And we interrupt this program to bring you the following news: A huge lump of sugar is headed towards planet earth, yes...that is where you and I live".
The unassuming average Brit, just sitting there, sipping on his morning coffee when he yet again is interrupted by a voice saying: "More sugar dear?" ...you all know where I am going with this.
Re: (Score:1)
Oh great! (Score:2)
As if we didn't have enough golf-club-gold-member yacht owning dentists in this world.
Imagine vampires turning people into more vampires, now...dentists will give birth to even more dentists...
Space pirates rejoice! (Score:3)
If there's sugar, someone will surely make rum out of it. We'll have plenty of space grog. Arrr!
Caramel! (Score:2)
Sugar that close to a sun must be caramelised - mmmmmm
Re:Bah. (Score:5, Interesting)
A sugar molecule is as far from an amoeba as a piece of quartz frim a supercomputer. Insisting that living things came from nonliving matter by random processes is absurd. Anyone who thinks that is being far more dogmatic than the creationists they stubbornly ridicule.
Where to start...
Amino acids are found in deep space, not exactly a prime spot for the development of life.
We know that living things came from nonliving matter (and energy), because the universe was once in a state where living matter could not exist, yet now living matter is rife in at least one place.
The universe and its processes are not entirely random. If they were, this sugar would not exist either.
It's the very opposite of "dogmatic" to base your views on evidence.
Yours might have been an OK troll the first day the internet existed, but now it's as far from "nice troll" as a sugar molecule is from an amoeba.
Re: (Score:1)
We know life comes from non-life becase we are here. Yea for scientific method!
Re: (Score:2)
Ur-Quan threat detected (Score:1, Offtopic)
Aren't the Ur-Quan [sourceforge.net] meant to come from that part of space? We are so screwed. ;)
BTW, Star Control II (or the open source Ur-Quan Masters) is a great game and is part of many Linux repos, and also has Win32 binaries. Download it plus a cheat map (it's too hard otherwise) and lose a weekend... it's a great game, universe and story, and it has a quirky sense of humour. Make sure you download the full music and speech, and persist through the early game - it's a little slow.
Yay! (Score:3, Funny)
"...never this close to a Sun like planet..." (Score:1)
"Glycolaldehyde has been found before in space, but never this close to a Sun-like planet."
Gentlemen. We have found the planet of heaven.
Re: (Score:1)
Gentlemen, we have found the post of stupid.
Re:Ribose as a major component for organic life? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ribose is an important component of RNA (and deoxy-ribose of DNA), so yeah, I'd say it's pretty central to life.
Re: (Score:2)
And notably, you can make enzymes from RNA as well - which is one of the hypothesized ways that life might've bootstrapped itself from the primordial ooze in the first place. There are a lot of RNAzymes floating around in your cellular nuclei right now.
Re: (Score:1)
That's what I said (I'm the AC from above). The article said it was only "major".
Re: (Score:2)
Why yes, I now see that you did. You are hereby vindicated!
Sugar in space? Oh no! (Score:2)
Quick! Somebody clean this mess up before space-flies gather on top of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Quick! Somebody clean this mess up before space-flies gather on top of it.
It may indicate Space Diabetes.
Re: (Score:2)
Sugar? In coffee? What the hell is wrong with these people?
Life is not meant to exist. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, I say.
old news! (Score:3)
This is a rehash of a paper published in November 2008 (Beltran, et. al.). By the way, glucolaldehyde is NOT a sugar, it is a diose. Well, the only diose.
So that's where (Score:1)
You would not want to swallow this stuff (Score:3)
Glycolaldehyde is the first step in the metabolism of ethylene glycol, and likewise will be metabolized to oxalic acid, which is the poison in rhubarb.
Re: (Score:2)
there's a reason.
quick question (Score:1)
How? Does it reflect some rare particular frequency of light? Oh wait, Doppler wavelength dilation. Did they travel out there and scoop some up to sample it? I don't get it! Why do they never mention how they determined what molecule is off on some distant solar system?! Good thing some intelligent slashd
Re: (Score:2)
if I must.
The primary method of determining what's out there is infrared spectroscopy. Each and every element and compound has its own infrared signature; regardless of temperature, luminosity, or the conditions of the surrounding space, the signature of a given compound/element is the same, therefore where you see a given signature you can be pretty certain that the compound to which it refers is present. What makes the science even more fun is that you can determine the signature of each molecule using sa
For all them creationists out there ... (Score:2)
Sweet justice ! ...
Spaaace Sugaaaah! (Score:2)
.. 't makm' e feeeeel so gooooood!
WhuuaaAAAAuuu!