Astronomers have found, of all things, a cloud of simple sugars near the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The cloud of glycoladehyde (a.k.a. two-carbon sugar) molecules is about 26,000 light years away, and is frozen to just a few degrees above absolute zero. Aside from the weirdness factor, astronomers are interested in this cloud because it suggests that the basic building blocks of life may have originated in interstellar space. Two-carbon sugar, after all, is one of the building blocks of DNA. Theoretically, comets and other interplanetary wanderers could pick up these sugars and "seed" planets with life-generating compounds.
But the truly important question is, does this mean the Milky Way isn't low-carb???
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