A comet, aptly named Lovejoy, has been discovered releasing huge quantities of alcohol and sugar out into space, according to Nasa.
A team from the Paris Observatory in France found 21 organic molecules in gas being expelled from the comet, including ethyl alcohol, the same type you'd find in alcoholic drinks, and glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar.
Nicolas Biver, the lead author of a paper in Science Advances about Comet Lovejoy, said that the find was the first time that technically-drinkable alcohol had been discovered around a comet. "We found that comet Lovejoy was releasing as much alcohol as in at least 500 bottles of wine every second during its peak activity."
The research explains that Lovejoy is one of the brightest and most active comets to come relatively close to Earth's orbit since the passage of Hale-Bopp back in 1997.
It was when Comet Lovejoy passed closest to the sun on 30 January 2015 that the team at the Paris Observatory were able to identify the organic molecules. To do it they used a 30 metre diameter radio telescope, able to to measure the glow of molecules as they became energised by the sun. As each type of molecule has a specific signature frequency, closely measuring this glow meant they were able to identify the ethyl alcohol.
Although there's something slightly surreal about the thought of a huge comet filled with alcohol hurtling around the solar system, the recent observations of Lovejoy are important because they mark the first time ethyl alcohol has ever been observed in a comet. Even so the discovery is not the first time alcohol of any kind has been found on a comet; in 2014 the Rosetta spacecraft discovered organic molecules on Comet 67P, thought to be a combination of methane and methanol.
The findings may also be used to support theories that certain organic molecules found on comets billions of years ago could have been responsible for the emergence of life on Earth.
Dominique Bockelée-Morvan from Paris Observatory, a co-author of the paper, said: "The next step is to see if the organic material being found in comets came from the primordial cloud that formed the solar system or if it was created later on, inside the protoplanetary disk that surrounded the young sun."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
