Tuesday 21 April 2009

RASPBERRIES & RUM

The Guardian reports that researchers have found an area of deep space which smells of raspberries and tastes of rum, or tastes of rum and smells of raspberries - I've already forgotten which.


Smell


Taste

Warning: The following excerpt contains the phrase "space raspberries":

'In the latest survey, astronomers sifted through thousands of signals from Sagittarius B2, a vast dust cloud at the centre of our galaxy. While they failed to find evidence for amino acids, they did find a substance called ethyl formate, the chemical responsible for the flavour of raspberries.

'"It does happen to give raspberries their flavour, but there are many other molecules that are needed to make space raspberries," Arnaud Belloche, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, told the Guardian.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/21/space-raspberries-amino-acids-astrobiology

Saturday 11 April 2009