The Largest Alcohol Molecule Found in Space Yet May Be The Key to Star Formation

Alcohol is up in space. It's not bottles of wine that are thrown away by astronauts; it's in tiny particles. Researchers think they have found the largest alcohol molecule in space with propanol.

There are two forms of propanol, normal-propanol and iso-propanol, both of which have been observed for the first time.

How comets and stars are formed should be explained by these discoveries.

Rob Garrod is an astronomer from the University of Virginia. The two molecule should be present in the same places at the same time because they resemble each other so much.

The only open question is the exact amounts that are present, which makes their interstellar ratio much more precise than would be the case for other pairs of molecule. It means that the network can be adjusted more carefully to determine the mechanisms by which it forms.

The delivery room of stars is called Sagittarius B2 and contains alcohol molecule. The region is close to the center of the Milky Way and the black hole that is built around it.

The arrival of the ALMA telescope in Chile 10 years ago has increased the level of detail that is accessible to the astronomer.

ALMA gives researchers a higher level of sensitivity and a higher level of resolution. It's important to know the specific radiation frequencies being emitted by each molecule in a busy part of space like Sgr B2 in order to calculate what's out there.

Holger Mller is a physicist from the University of Cologne in Germany. In a source like Sgr B2, it is difficult to disentangle their fingerprints and identify them individually.

The discovery was made thanks to the way that ALMA can detect narrow lines and the lab work that characterized the signatures that propanol isomers would give off in space.

Scientists can look in more detail at the chemical reactions that have produced them if they are able to find molecules that are closely linked.

The work is trying to understand how a chemical melting pot can lead to star formation. ALMA has spotted the organic molecule iso-propyl cyanide.

A lot of work is left to decipher the chemical composition of Sgr B2 because there are still many unidentifiedspectral lines in the ALMA spectrum.

In the near future, the expansion of the ALMA instrumentation down to lower frequencies will likely allow us to identify additional organic molecules in this spectacular source.

Here and here, the research has been published.