Science is Fun Fridays!
The sugar in raspberries is called erythrulose, and it has been found near the center of our Milky Way. "It opens up the possibility of discovering in space other sugars such as ribose, which is part of RNA, and other important molecules for the origin of life," says co-author, Carlos Briones. Erythrulose can change into the ingredients that create nucleic acids, which are essential to life. There were previous reports of a dust cloud, called Sagittarius B2, that radio telescopes determined smells like raspberries, (caused by ethyl formate), but this is the first time sugar has been found in the interstellar medium - the space between star systems in a galaxy.