Astronomers just found sugar floating between the stars

A team led by astrochemist Izaskun Jiménez-Serra at the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid has detected erythrulose — a real sugar molecule — in a cloud of gas and dust drifting between stars near the center of our galaxy. It is the first sugar ever found in interstellar space, and it suggests some of the raw ingredients of life are cooked up in the cold dark long before stars and planets even form. The universe was doing chemistry long before Earth existed.