OK, OK, this isn’t the kind of alcohol you can drink. There is no planet with rivers of good beer or geysers of delicious flavored vodka, at least until we get that terraforming initiative up and running. But they have found methanol in space, and that’s a good thing.
Why? Because methanol is widely considered an important chemical pathway for complex organic molecules. It’s formed by carbon monoxide on space dust reacting with hydrogen. Blast it with cosmic rays, and you get more complex molecules that can be incorporated into stars and planets, and that, you know, support life.
In other words, we can’t drink methanol, but it might be responsible for why we’re walking around. Oh, and by the way? We’re on the low end of the scale for this. Yeah, life might be evolving faster elsewhere in the universe. Best…science…ever.
[ via the space aliens at Ars Technica ]