FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Food

This Fun-Loving Comet Is Spraying Tons of Booze Into Space

NASA says that Comet Lovejoy "really lives up to its name" by emitting the equivalent of 500 bottles of wine a second. Oh yeah, and it might unlock the secrets of the origins of life!
Hilary Pollack
Los Angeles, US

When you wish upon a star / Makes no difference who you are / Anything your heart desires / Will come to you…

And what if you're wishing for tons and tons of booze?

No problem—if the star you're wishing on is Comet Lovejoy.

See, comets are known to have a tail (a set of two tails, actually) comprised of dust and gas trailing behind them while they pass through the sky. The particles making up the saucy caboose of a comet are typically a hodgepodge of ions, ice, and tiny pieces of rock. But Lovejoy is unique in its party-friendly composition, which is heavy in alcohol. Yep—the same kind we drink recreationally.

Advertisement

An international team studying Lovejoy with researchers based in France, Germany, Spain, and Sweden has found that its tail is releasing massive loads of ethyl alcohol and sugar into space, and it's the first time that this particular type of alcohol has been found in a comet. A NASA statement remarks that Lovejoy "lived up to its name" with this discovery. And the amount of booze that it's flinging into the ether is pretty significant.

comet-lovejoy-1

Photo by Fabrice Noel via NASA

"We found that Comet Lovejoy was releasing as much alcohol as in at least 500 bottles of wine every second during its peak activity," remarked Nicolas Biver of France's Paris Observatory, who is also lead author of the announcement about Lovejoy published October 23 in the journal Science Advances. And that makes Lovejoy pretty damn unique.

The free-spirited comet also contains sugar and 21 other organic molecules of interest in its gas, which could help scientists unlock mysteries about how our solar system came to be and even how life began on Earth.

NASA notes that while most comets do their thing way out in the "frigid zones" of our galaxy, "gravitational disturbances" can sometimes corral them closer to Earth where they can be observed by researchers. Perhaps you remember when that big ol' freak Hale-Bopp hung around for more than a year in the mid-90s, or hearing about the return of Halley, which is visible from our planet every 75 years.

READ: Elton John Now Has a Species of Shrimp Named After Him and It's Glorious

In fact, when it showed up in January of this year, Comet Lovejoy was one of the most visible comets since Hale-Bopp high-tailed it out of here in 1997, and its array of complex organic molecules—booze and sugar included—made it a fascinating find for researchers who are hoping to discern what role comets may have taken in the origins of life on Earth.

In terms of organic chemistry, NASA's Stefanie Milam, a co-author on the paper, explains: "We're finding molecules with multiple carbon atoms [on Lovejoy]. So now you can see where sugars start forming, as well as more complex organics such as amino acids—the building blocks of proteins—or nucleobases, the building blocks of DNA."

Let's hope that scientists and aliens alike make good use of the cool cocktail that Lovejoy is leaving its wake. Science is cool, guys.