Did you know … the Milky Way smells of rum, raspberries, and booze?

Rum and raspberries. That’s right.

It sounds like a celestial cocktail, a combination of flavours made in heaven, or does it not?

We are not here to talk about cocktails, though. We are here to talk about one of the most fascinating facts that space, the universe, and more precisely, the Milky Way has to offer.

It all started back in 2009, when a team of astronomers exploring a giant cloud of gas and dust at the centre of the Milky Way made an unprecedented and yet fascinating discovery.

The astronomers had trained their 30-metre radio telescope on the gigantic ball of dust and gas hoping to spot complex molecules that are vital for life.

For astrobiologists, finding amino acids in interstellar space is a dream come true, a Holy Grail. Finding amino acids would raise the possibility of life emerging on other planets if they were seeded with these molecules.

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, which are critical for complex life to exist anywhere in the universe. The researchers believe that they could find amino acids in space in the coming years. The closest that researchers ever got to finding amino acids in space was the discovery of a molecule that can be used to make them, called amino acetonitrile. That was back in 2008.

Perhaps the researchers were disappointed but they made another rather amusing discovery, instead.

The cloud they were studying. Sagittarius B2, which is a vast dust cloud at the centre of our galaxy, was not full of amino acids as they expected. Instead, it was packed full of a chemical substance known as ethyl formate, which has a couple of intriguing properties.

Ethyl Formate is, indeed, the chemical responsible for giving raspberries their flavour. Another characteristic of ethyl formate is that it also smells of rum.

Whilst analysing the data, the scientists also found evidence for the lethal chemical propyl cyanide (it behaves like hydrogen cyanid, which is a potent poison) and also found its sister molecule, iso-propyl cyanide, in the same Sagittarius B2 cloud.

Exploring further, another nearby region in the galaxy is also notable as it is full of ethyl alcohol, known also as ethanol, the type that is used to make alcoholic beverages.

This region in the Milky Way contains enough alcohol to supply every person on planet Earth with 300,000 pints of beer per day for the next billion years.

So, forget about amino acids. This discovery of what space seems to be made of is more entertaining. I don’t drink beer, so you can have mine if you wish. I like the idea of a gigantic raspberry rum cocktail, though.

Now, if you are thinking about the Milky Way as a free booze paradise, hold your horses.

If bottled at the source, the proof for this beer would be very low, with an alcohol content of less than one per cent; but, as the cloud also contains plenty of other nasty chemicals, including carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, it would still leave you with quite a headache the next morning, at the very least, if not worse.

Totally not worth it. Or, what do think?

If you found this interesting and want to learn more, Astrophysicist Dr. Jillian Scudder, Associate Professor at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio wrote a fantastic book, The Milky Way Smells of Rum and Raspberries, where she focuses on weird and wonderful facts of the universe. In her book, Dr. Scudder discusses this amazing discovery that keeps us thinking of a raspberry rum cocktail and more. You can learn more here: The Milky Way Smells of Rum and Raspberries.