By The Way...

The Milky Way's made of sugar! No, not the candy bar -- the actual galaxy:

ASTRONOMERS have found a cloud of frozen sugar near the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, it was revealed yesterday... Molecules of a simple sugar, glycolaldehyde, were detected in a cloud of gas and dust called Sagittarius B2 about 26,000 light years away. Observations indicated large quantities of the sugar frozen to a temperature only a few degrees above absolute zero, the point at which all molecular movement stops.

Aside from making our galaxy a sweet place to live, it also lends more credibility to the idea that building blocks of life may have formed in space; see there's actual science involved.

This is added to the cloud of alcohol they found in space over a decade ago (no, really). It's like a giant fattening celestial smorgasbord out there. In space, no one can hear you diet.

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• #4 Comment from childebrand1968 
  9/22/04 10:03 PM | Permalink

  I'm not surprised at all, we know precious little about whats beyond our atmosphere.  Granted, we are making new strides daily and hopefully continue to do so (if NASA doesnt get shut down due to budget cuts).  It is, after all, a Brave New World out there.  
  
  Cat
  http://journals.aol.com/childebrand1968/SavingSanity/
• #3 Comment from sdoscher458 
  9/22/04 5:18 PM | Permalink

  Doesn't it make you wonder where it all came from? The leaps and bounds that science will take in the next 100 years .. I wish I could see it...Sandi
• #2 Comment from st0rmwhispers 
  9/22/04 5:14 PM | Permalink

  If I would have known there was alcohol and sugar in space when I was back in school.... I might have considered becoming an astronaut.  
• #1 Comment from zhaneelok 
  9/22/04 4:52 PM | Permalink

  Errr.... just to be a twitty scientist: glycolaldehyde is not the same thing as sucrose [the sugar we think of as sugar].  Sugar, in scientifictic terms, is just a classification of a type of molecule that has specific emerical formula (different from molecular formula).  See http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/Carbohydrates.html for a more info on the types of carbohydrates & sugars and http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast20jun_1.htm for a structure comparison of glycolaldehyde and glucose [blood sugar].
  
  Dawn
  
  PS: I know you probably know this, but many other might not.  I tend to err on the side of over-explaning so that people don't walk away thinking the milkyway is really made of crystalline table sugar.