Scientists have made a bizarre discovery: a comet streaking through space is leaking a combination of alcohol and sugar.
This booze isn’t quite the kind you’d find in your local liquor store, but it is a complex organic molecule that represents one of the building blocks of life, and could help us better understand how life got here on Earth, according to an Agence France-Presse report.
Scientists have zeroed on on Comet Lovejoy, and in a study published in the journal Science Advances they detailed how they detected ethyl alcohol and glycolaldehyde, which is a simple sugar. The researchers think these organic molecules are part of the rocky material that formed planets.
It’s not the first time scientists have found organic molecules hitching a ride on comets, with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — the one that Europeans landed the probe Philae on last year — hosting four complex organic molecules that until then had never been detected on a comet before.
Comets are excellent bodies to study to understand the origin of planets and even life itself because they are the remnants of ancient cosmic collisions, ejecting primitive material into deep space where it drifts about, occasionally crossing into our field of view. It’s like a time capsule from billions of years ago when our solar system began to take shape.
Comet Lovejoy is one of the most active comets in the Earth’s general vicinity, which is why it is a favorite of scientists for study. Researchers used a telescope at the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique in Sierra Nevada, Spain to observe the comet during its brightest period back in January 2015.
NASA published a statement on the finding, which is available here.