Comet Lovejoy Sprinkles Ingredients for Life, Booze Across the Solar System

Comet Lovejoy lived up to its name by releasing large amounts of alcohol as well as a type of sugar into space, according to new observations. The finding marks the first time ethyl alcohol, the same type in alcoholic beverages, has been detected in a comet, scientists said. The aptly named Comet Lovejoy contains ethanol and the simple sugar glycolaldehyde, researchers report online October 23 in Science Advances. It adds evidence that comets could have been a source of the complex molecules necessary for the emergence of life on Earth. It's theorized that when comets collided with Earth billions of years ago, they could have delivered these molecules to our planet.

"The result definitely promotes the idea the comets carry very complex chemistry", said Stefanie Milam, a co-author of the study, who works in the astrochemistry department at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Pic Alcohol is pretty essential to life here on Earth, but for the first time, scientists have found the blessed fluid venting in huge amounts from a comet flying through our Solar System. "Instead, life had something that was much more sophisticated on a molecular level", she said.

And because molecules are the building blocks of life, finding them on distant comets is also an encouraging sign for the prospect of life outside our planet.

Wine and chocolates. Nice for a romantic evening, or a trek across the stars if you are the Lovejoy Comet. The recent discoveries of Comet Lovejoy's emissions came during an exceptionally rare window of opportunity.

"The presence of a serious complicated natural molecule in comet materials is an important step towards higher understanding the circumstances that prevailed in the meanwhile when life emerged on our planet", she informed AFP. Sugar compounds are needed in order to ferment into alcohol.

Comets that have passed by the sun so many times that they have lost most of their ice, and thus no longer produce an atmosphere or tail, are called "extinct" comets. A few even believe that it was comets bombarding the Planet Earth that actually led to life on Earth.

Astronomers first spotted Lovejoy in 2014, though that wasn't hard given that it is among the brightest comets to travel through the solar system since Hale-Bopp in 1997. Simple biology may require nothing more than chemistry plus energy plus sufficient time to slow-cook.