Scientists Find Isoprophyl Alcohol in Milky Way; Can You Guess Which Part It Hides?

Isopropyl alcohol, often referred to as iso-propanol in space, has been discovered by researchers. The substance has never before been discovered outside of Earth. Detergents, hand sanitizers, disinfectants, and antiseptics frequently contain the component isopropyl alcohol.

It has been discovered in the Milky Way's "delivery chamber" of stars, also known as Sagittarius B2, a vast stellar nursery or star-forming area near the location of the enormous black hole Sagittarius A*.

The molecular cloud is the subject of more research. Astronomers have been searching the heavens for chemical compounds for more than 50 years, and thus far, 276 molecules have been found in outer space.

The research aimed to examine and identify the processes involved in synthesizing organic compounds in star formation environments and the complexity of these molecules. The goal is to better comprehend the objects' makeup in our own Solar System. In the past, many chemicals have been found in Sagittarius B2's star-forming zone.

"Our group began to investigate the chemical composition of Sgr B2 more than 15 years ago with the IRAM 30-m telescope," astronomer Arnaud Belloche, who serves as the study's lead author, said in a statement.

According to Belloche, these observations were effective and produced several interesting outcomes, including the first interstellar identification of many chemical compounds.

(Photo : DANIEL REINHARDT/dpa/AFP via Getty Images)
TOPSHOT - The milky way and meteors of the April Lyrids annual meteor shower are seen in the night sky over Burg auf Fehmarn on the Baltic Sea island of Fehmarn, northern Germany, on April 20, 2018.

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Largest Alcohol Molecule Discovered in Saggitarius B2

There are two isomers or types of propane. In propanol and iso-propanol, the hydroxyl group is joined to the carbon atoms at the ends of the chains, respectively.

Both isomers have been detected in Sagittarius B2. Propanol has never been found in a star-forming area before, and iso-propanol has never been found in the interstellar medium.

"The detection of both isomers of propanol is uniquely powerful in determining the formation mechanism of each," astrochemist Rob Garrod said in a Science Alert report.

Due to how closely the chemicals resemble one another and how similarly they act physically, Garrod said the two molecules should be present in the same locations simultaneously because of how much they resemble one another and how they physically act.

Their interstellar ratio is much more accurate than it would be for other pairings of molecules since the only unknown is the precise numbers that are there. To pinpoint the methods they develop, the chemical network may now be tweaked considerably more precisely.

The molecules' spectral signatures have been used to identify them. Astronomer Holger Müller said in an Astrobiology report that more spectral lines at various frequencies are produced by larger molecules.

Müller added that the amount of molecules in a source like Sgr B2 that contribute to the radiation detected causes their spectra to overlap, making it challenging to separate their fingerprints and identify each one separately.

The results have been reported in a publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics.