Milky Way full of "spatial fat": study

MELBOURNE: The galaxy is rich in fat-like molecules, say scientists who have estimated the amount of "space fat" found in the Milky Way.

Organic matter of different kinds contains carbon, an element considered essential to life. There is real uncertainty about its abundance, and only half of the expected carbon is between the stars in its pure form.

The rest is chemically bound in two main forms, fat (aliphatic) and mothball (aromatic). Researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia used a laboratory to create materials with the same properties as interstellar dust.

They mimicked the process by which organic molecules are synthesized in carbon starflows, by expansing a carbon-containing plasma in a low temperature vacuum.

The material was collected and badyzed by a combination of techniques. Using magnetic resonance and spectroscopy (separating light in its constituent wavelengths), they were able to determine to what extent the material absorbed light with a certain infrared wavelength, a marker for carbon. aliphatic.

"The combination of our laboratory results with observations from astronomical observatories allows us to measure the amount of aliphatic carbon between us and the stars," said Tim Schmidt, of UNSW.

The study, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, revealed that there are about 100 fatty carbon atoms for every one million atoms of hydrogen, which represents between a quarter and half of the available carbon.

In the Milky Way, this represents about 10 trillion trillion tons of fat, or enough for 40 trillion trillion packets of butter.

"This space fat is not the kind of thing that we would want to spread on a slice of toast: it is dirty, probably toxic and only forms in the environment of interstellar space, "said Schmidt.

"It is also intriguing that the organic matter of this type of material that is incorporated in planetary systems is so abundant," he said.

The team now wants to determine the abundance of mothballs as carbon, which will involve even more difficult work in the laboratory.

By firmly establishing the amount of each type of carbon in the dust, they will know exactly how much of that element is available to create life.