Astronomers have discovered a type of sugar in space that is also found in raspberries and tanning products. This sugar, called erythrose, has been detected in the so-called interstellar medium — the sparse clouds of gas and dust between stars. The role of sugar is not limited to sweetening tea and glazing donuts. Different types of sugar nourish our cells and are part of DNA, and scientists are striving to understand how sugars are formed, as they are a crucial ingredient for life as we know it. Using two radio telescope dishes in Spain, researchers collected data from a large gas cloud near the center of the Milky Way. They identified the sugar in gas form by comparing the telescope signals with samples obtained in the laboratory. This is the latest type of sugar discovered in space — in an area that was traversed by two NASA Voyager probes, the farthest spacecraft to have ever left the vicinity of Earth. The results were published on Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. Scientists have previously found remarkable chemical compounds in our galaxy, including building blocks of genetic material and cell components. About 25 years ago, they discovered a "relative" of common sugar near the center of the Milky Way, and black grains brought back from the asteroid Bennu by NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft contained other sugars, including a key ingredient of DNA. The latest discovered type of sugar is not essential for life, but it can easily transition into a form considered important for initiating life processes on Earth. It is also one of the most complex sugars found in space, noted astrophysicist Erika Hamden from the University of Arizona. This is "an ideal sample of a substance that is just drifting through the galaxy," said Hamden, who was not involved in the new study. Such interstellar studies aim to understand how life originated. Did distant comets or cosmic chunks deliver the necessary ingredients to Earth? Or were key components already present in the interstellar medium, ultimately giving rise to our Solar System? The new sugar finding more likely supports the second theory. Researchers now intend to search for other sugars in space and determine how they transition from one form to another. The fact that they were found in one location suggests that they are likely hiding in distant corners of the galaxy alongside other important molecules, noted study author Isaskun Jimenez-Serra, an astrophysicist at the Astrobiology Center in Spain. "Key ingredients for the origin of life may be present in other regions of the galaxy, opening up the possibility of life arising somewhere else in the universe," said Jimenez-Serra.