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17 Jun 2002
In a stellar cloud 25,000 light years from Earth, researchers have found ordinary vinegar, an organic molecule that may have played a role in the formation of life. Radio astronomers from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, found the faint traces of vinegar, also known as acetic acid, in a cloud of gas and dust named Sagittarius B2 North.
"Acetic acid could have been one of the first steps toward the chemicals of life," said Lewis E. Snyder, one of the University of Illinois team. "If you add a form of ammonia to it, you get glycine, the simplest, biologically important amino acid."
The vinegar molecules were found in a cloud similar to the cloud that astronomers believe formed the sun and the planets, including Earth, in the solar system, Snyder said. Finding vinegar in such a cloud, so far away from Earth, suggests that the chemicals necessary for life were present in the solar system as it formed 4.5 billion years ago, he said.
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