Natural Sciences Active Updated Jul 14, 2026
Sugars and life's building blocks keep turning up in space
Astronomers keep finding molecules central to biology, sugars and other prebiotic chemistry, already present in interstellar gas clouds and comets, long before any planet exists to use them. The arc tracks whether this chemistry is common throughout the galaxy and how much of it could survive the trip to a planet's surface intact.
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Jul 14, 2026 Latest
Astronomers using Spain's Yebes 40-meter and IRAM 30-meter radio telescopes detected erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar also found in raspberries, in a gas and dust cloud called G+0.693-0.027 near the Milky Way's center, the first time this sugar has been found outside the solar system. Erythrulose can convert into threose, a sugar some researchers think was a building block of the first nucleic acids that became RNA and DNA.
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