Astronomy can be so tasty

• From The Sun of London:

The centre of our Milky Way galaxy tastes of raspberries, say astronomers -- and smells of rum.

Scientists searching for life’s chemical building blocks found a molecule responsible for the fruit flavour. The ethyl formate also has a whiff of the Caribbean drink.

Astronomer Arnaud Belloche said: “It does happen to give raspberries their flavour -- but there are many other molecules that are needed to make space raspberries.”

The researchers had trained a 30-metre radio telescope on Sagittarius B2, a star-forming dust cloud at the heart of our galaxy.

Dr. Belloche, based in Bonn, Germany, added: “We’ve identified around 50 molecules in our survey, and two of those had not been seen before.”

He revealed the results at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield.

They follow claims, made in October last year, that space smells of fried steak and welding.

NASA astronauts reported the scents on their space suits.

To Dowd's Wine Notebook latest entry.
To Dowd's Spirits Notebook
To Dowd's Brews Notebook latest entry.
To Dowd's Tasting Notes latest entry.
Back to Dowd On Drinks home page.