HARROW: Astronomers were able to find two organic molecules in space and it came from a comet that passes by Earth only once every 8,000 years.
Ethyl alcohol and a sugar compound, glycolaldehyde, was identified in the mass of iced water that is the comet Lovejoy, according to findings from a study published in the Science Advances journal.
“We found that comet Lovejoy was releasing as much alcohol as in at least 500 bottles of wine every second during its peak activity,” said lead author Nicolas Biver of the Paris Observatory, France.
Comets are generally made of rock, iced water and dust particles, though they can also come with a variety of chemicals. While organic materials like hydrogen and oxygen have been discovered on other comets before, Lovejoy is the only one so far that has traces of alcohol and sugar in its composition.
“The presence of a major complex organic molecule in comet material is an essential step toward better understanding the conditions that prevailed at the moment when life emerged on our planet,” said astrophysicist Dominique Bockelée-Morvan from the French National Center for Scientific Research.
She added that the presence of these organic materials in comets could help give more clues on the origins of planets and the emergence of living organisms.
There is an ongoing debate about whether or not comets could have contributed to life on Earth. Last August, scientists showed how comets colliding with a solid object could infuse the organic materials it is made of into longer chained molecules as well.
