Huge alcohol cloud spotted by astronomers

[wovenpaint]

Going off to work but this begged to be posted...enjoy! :popcorn:


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060404/sc_afp/spaceastronomyoffbeat_060404000657

[acmejack]

1. Ready the Imperial Star Cruiser!

[MADem]

4. Monkey needs to take a little trip???? n/t

[boobooday]

2. Floating over the White House?

That would explain a lot.

:popcorn:

[atommom]

3. Too bad it's methanol instead of ethanol.

;)

[htuttle]

5. That's like 50-80 times the size of our solar system, isn't it?

It's 288 billion miles across.

How the hell does something like THAT get there? I'm trying to imagine what sort of chemistry could even produce that many alcohol molecules. I can't think of any way a nuclear reaction could produce methyl alcohol.

Huge colony of intersteller yeast, brewing for a few billion years?

Stumped.

[darkmaestro019]

9. Maybe someone dumped a cargo hold? lol. eom

[htuttle]

11. The more I think about it, the more stumped I get

It's the scale of it that gets me.

The elements in alcohol are only formed in stellar explosions, leading to second generation stars like our own, right? But for any cloud of molecules, however they were made, to spread over 288 billion miles -- How long would that have taken? Are there multiple sources or an 'alcohol quasar' of some kind?

Astonishing.

[darkmaestro019]

16. I'm deeply fond of astronomy but self-taught and terrible at math...

Could perhaps the cloud have been formed and then something else (passing "wind" or an object) have scattered it?


edit, sp

[Cooley Hurd]

6. What... did Cheney fart?

:rofl:

[Zynx]

10. LOL! He had 463 billion kilometers in him!

[zbdent]

7. Well, Bush has been quoted as wanting to get to Mars

with his track record, this is probably what he's really aiming for . . . I mean, he wanted Osama, "Dead or Alive", then invaded Iraq . . .

[entanglement]

8. It's methanol - the stuff used to denature spirits

What a shame! :cry:

[shenmue]

12. Let me get some ice cubes...

I'm going into space. :7

[SoFlaJet]

15. There's a drunken alien

joke in there somewhere

[starchimes]

13. Well that explains alot, the gods have been on a bender..........

and have just been messing with us poor earthlings.

[seriousstan]

14. OSU found ETHANOL in space YEARS ago..........drink it in.....

SCIENTISTS TAP INTO CLOUDS OF PURE ALCOHOL IN OUTER SPACE

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Using data collected by researchers at Ohio State University, astronomers have found vast quantities of pure alcohol in an interstellar cloud some 10,000 light years from Earth.

Scientists said the cloud, located near the constellation Aquila, contains enough alcohol to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer.

The discovery was made during a study of how stars begin. Stars form from interstellar clouds, large conglomerations of gases and dust particles which can extend hundreds of light years across. Scientists have known for some time that the largest component of these clouds is hydrogen, but until now, they were not sure if ethyl alcohol molecules were also an ingredient.

"Over the course of the last 25 years or so, a number of molecules have been observed in space and scientists identify them by studying the frequencies of radiation they emit," said Eric Herbst, a professor of physics and astronomy at Ohio State. Herbst and Frank De Lucia, professor and chair of the physics department, authored a study on the specific radio frequencies of

ethyl alcohol.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/beercld.htm