German scientists have discovered a large amount of alcohol near the center of the Milky Way – but this alcohol is not the same alcohol that is also found in beer, wine and brandy.
A team from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany reported last year that they had discovered a cloud of propanol molecules in the central region of our galaxy. He writes the Futurism. Propanol is an organic compound that smells very similar to regular alcohol.
Scientists have identified the propanol molecule, believed to be the largest alcohol molecule ever discovered in space, near the star-forming region Sagittarius B2, not far from the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. In addition to propanol, researchers also discovered isopropanol molecules. This compound is mainly used as a solvent, but can also be used for disinfection – it appears frequently in various hand sanitizers, among other things.
Incidentally, this discovery is extremely important for space research, as the presence of this material helps us better understand how star-forming regions like Sagittarius B2 work.
However, this is not the first time scientists have found alcohol in space: since 2014, researchers have made a similar discovery several times in space. Atacama– With one of the giant telescopes on the edge of the Sahara, ALMA, through which three new types of organic molecules, isopropyl cyanide, N-methylformamide and urea, were discovered in space.
