A team of scientists released a study detailing observations of a comet - appropriately named "Lovejoy" - that releasing alcohol and sugar as it went.
"We found that comet Lovejoy was releasing as much alcohol as in at least 500 bottles of wine every second during its peak activity," Nicolas Biver, a researcher at the Paris Observatory and the lead author on a study published in the journal Science Advances, said in a press release.
According to The Verge, astronomers began observing Comet Lovejoy on Jan. 30 when it made its closest approach to the sun. As the European Space Agency saw firsthand with Comet 67/P-G, this is the point at which comets release their contents as the star rapidly heats them.
"The result definitely promotes the idea the comets carry very complex chemistry," study co-author Stefanie Milam, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in the release. "During the Late Heavy Bombardment about 3.8 billion years ago, when many comets and asteroids were blasting into Earth and we were getting our first oceans, life didn't have to start with just simple molecules like water, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen. Instead, life had something that was much more sophisticated on a molecular level. We're finding molecules with multiple carbon atoms.
"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. These can start forming much easier than beginning with molecules with only two or three atoms."
