Scientists discover giant alcohol molecule near the center of our galaxy

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Sci­en­tists Say They’ve Found Alco­hol Mol­e­cules In Space — Sad­ly, It’s Not The Kind That Gets You Drunk

A team from the Max Planck Insti­tute for Radio Astron­o­my in Ger­many has spot­ted a cloud of propanol alco­hol mol­e­cules near the cen­ter of the Milky Way — accord­ing to the researchers the largest alco­hol mol­e­cule ever found in space — a find they believe will help us could bet­ter under­stand how stars form.

Space Disinfectant

The team dis­cov­ered both iso­propanol, which is best known for its util­i­ty in mak­ing hand san­i­tiz­er, and reg­u­lar propanol, the oth­er type of propanol alco­hol that is chem­i­cal­ly quite sim­i­lar, near Sagit­tar­ius B2, an inter­stel­lar region not far from Sagit­tar­ius A*, the super­mas­sive black hole lurk­ing at the cen­ter of our galaxy.

The region is nick­named the “deliv­ery room” because it is the birth­place of many stars. The dis­cov­ery of these chem­i­cals in inter­stel­lar space is part of a long-run­ning effort to bet­ter under­stand stel­lar incu­ba­tor regions like Sagit­tar­ius B2.

“Detect­ing both iso­mers of propanol is unique­ly pow­er­ful in deter­min­ing the mech­a­nism of for­ma­tion of each,” said Rob Gar­rod of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, co-author of one of two new papers pub­lished in the jour­nal astron­o­my astro­physicsin an opinion.

“Because they are so sim­i­lar, phys­i­cal­ly they behave very sim­i­lar­ly, which means that the two mol­e­cules should be present in the same places at the same time,” Gar­rod added.

Galactic Mixology

While we’ve been hunt­ing these types of mol­e­cules in space for more than 15 years, this par­tic­u­lar dis­cov­ery has only now become pos­si­ble thanks to the advent of the gar­gan­tu­an, hyper­sen­si­tive Ata­ca­ma Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) tele­scope in Chile.

Since 2014, ALMA has also enabled sci­en­tists to dis­cov­er three new types of organ­ic mol­e­cules — iso­propyl cyanide, N‑methylformamide, and urea — in space, accord­ing to the press release.

Many ques­tions remain about the chem­i­cal process­es involved in their birth. And although we still don’t know for sure what kind of galac­tic mixol­o­gy [nice] pro­duces stars and oth­er celes­tial bod­ies, the dis­cov­ery of giant alco­hol iso­mers could bring us a step clos­er to this recipe.