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The interstellar space may seem like an empty void but it is actually filled with a strange cloud of toxic fat, suggest new research.
Experts have created a synthetic version of interstellar dust from asteroids and analyzed it
They discovered that the Milky Way alone contains enough "space grease" to fill up 40 trillion trillion billions of packs of butter
That equates to 10 trillion trillion tons of fat.
Most of the time, the windshield of a future spaceship crossing interstellar space will likely have a sticky coating, say the researchers.
The gloopy material is one of two forms of carbon – the element responsible for stars, planets and organic life forms – found bound to hydrogen in the space.
The researchers are now hoping to find out more about the second form they determine exactly how much carbon there is in the universe.
An international team of researchers, including from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, made the discovery.
They found that there are about 100 greasy carbon atoms for every one million atoms of hydrogen.
They represent between a quarter and half of the carbon available in the universe.
In the Milky Way, this represents about 10 trillion trillion tons of fat, or enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packets of butter.
The team's researchers quickly dissolved the comparison with all that is edible.
"This space fat is not the kind of thing that we would want to spread on a slice of toast," said Professor Tim Schmidt, of UNSW in Sydney.
"It's dirty, probably toxic and only forms in the environment of interstellar space – and our laboratory.
"It is also intriguing that organic matter of this kind – materials incorporated in planetary systems – are so abundant."
Organic matter of different types contains carbon, an element considered essential to life .
However, there is real uncertainty about its abundance, and only half of carbon scientists predict that interstellar space is in its pure form.
The rest is chemically related to hydrogen in two main forms. The first is a fat-like substance known as aliphatic carbon, or "fat" carbon.
The second is a gaseous form of naphthalene that smells of traditional naphthalene, which was made using the chemical. the process by which these organic molecules are synthesized in the carbon starflows.
They did this by dilating a plasma containing carbon, a high-temperature gas found in stars, in a low-temperature vacuum
. Using magnetic resonance and spectroscopy – dividing the light into its constituent wavelengths – they were able to determine how the material absorbed light with a certain infrared wavelength, a marker for fatty aliphatics.
The team now wants to determine the abundance of carbon similar to mothballs.
By firmly establishing the amount of each type of carbon in the dust, they will know exactly how much of this element is available to create life.
The complete results of the study were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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