Comet Lovejoy might be pretty tipsy.
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Biver and his team spotted 21 different complex organics in the cloud of material surrounding Lovejoy, including two-ethyl alcohol and the simple sugar glycolaldehyde-that had never been seen in a comet before.
According to lead researcher, Nicolas Biver of The Paris Observatory, the comet was releasing the same amount of alcohol as you’d find in 500 bottles of wine.
The authors of a new study published last week in Science Advances say they’ve found a comet that emits something no other comet studied has before: ethyl alcohol. These molecules get excited when the sunlight hits them, and glow at different microwave frequencies depending on their chemical composition.
“The finding adds to the evidence that comets could have been a source of the complex organic molecules necessary for the emergence of life”, NASA said. The IRAM 30-meter telescope (seen above) can identify multiple frequencies at the same time and determine what molecules are being observed and how much.
Comet Lovejoy, formally named C/2014 Q2, was discovered by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy in August 2014.
At the time of the observations, Lovejoy was about 0.6 astronomical units (AU) from Earth and 1.3 AU from the sun, researchers said.
According to scientists, comets are remnants from the earliest creation of our solar system, and the discoveries made from come Lovejoy promotes the theory that, as comets hit Earth billions of years ago, the celestial bodies carried organic molecules that could have helped jumpstart the beginnings of life.
Of course Lovejoy is a particularly intense comet – the brightest to pass by this way since 1997’s Hale-Bopp – and may simply be a bit of a party animal.
In July, the European Space Agency reported that the Philae lander from its Rosetta spacecraft in orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko detected 16 organic compounds as it descended toward and then bounced across the comet’s surface.
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“Instead, life had something that was much more sophisticated on a molecular level”, he said. Comets can shelter organic material responsible for the evolution of unknown life forms. “Detecting biological molecules in a comet means that the material that formed our solar system also formed other stars and it’s the same material”, she said.
