The Milky Way “could taste of raspberries”, according to scientists.
They have discovered two of the most complex carbon-rich molecules ever found in interstellar space, including a substance called ethyl formate, the chemical responsible for the flavour of the fruit.
The molecules were detected in the star-forming region of space known as Sagittarius B2 in a giant dust cloud at the heart of our galaxy.
The findings were announced during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire.
Meanwhile, scientists believe they are one step closer to finding planets that could support life after discovering a new planet.
Gliese 581 d, is said to be “well within” the “habitable zone”, where liquid water oceans could exist and life could be sustained.
It is one of four found in the Gliese system, which has five times the mass of Earth and orbits its host star in 66.8 days.
Researcher Stephane Udry, of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, said: “Gliese 581 d is probably too massive to be made only of rocky material, but we can speculate that it is an icy planet that has migrated closer to the star.
“‘D’ could even be covered by a large and deep ocean – it is the first serious ‘water world’ candidate.”
Lead researcher Michel Mayor, also of the French observatory, said: “The holy grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the habitable zone – a region around the host star with the right conditions for water to be liquid on a planet’s surface.
“It is amazing to see how far we have come since we discovered the first exoplanet around a normal star in 1995 – the one around 51 Pegasi. The mass of Gliese 581 e is 80 times less than that of 51 Pegasi b. This is tremendous progress in just 14 years.”
The discoveries were the outcome of four years of observations using a 3.6m telescope at La Silla, Chile. The previous record for the lightest exoplanet was a planet with with about four times the mass of the Earth.
The results of the study have been submitted for publication in the research journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
