Ten thousand light twelvemonth from earth in a configuration far , far aside , there is massive cloud of alcohol . It ’s space booze .
Discovered in 1995 near the configuration Aquila , the swarm is 1000 time enceinte than the diam of our solar system . It contains enough ethyl alcoholic beverage to satisfy 400 trillion trillion pint of beer . To down that much alcohol , every mortal on earthly concern would have to imbibe 300,000 pints each Clarence Shepard Day Jr. — for one billion twelvemonth .
Sadly , for those of you planning an interstellar public house crawl , the cloud is 58 quadrillion mile away . It ’s also a cocktail of 32 chemical compound , some of them as nasty as carbon monoxide , hydrogen cyanide , and ammonia water .
The coltsfoot has a second intergalactic hard drink cabinet in the Sagittarius B2 Cloud ( the undimmed , orange - red spot in the effigy above ) , which hold 10 billion billion billion liters of cosmic hooch . Most of it ’s undrinkable , though . The cloud holds mostly methyl alcohol , the same alcohol in antifreeze and windshield washer fluid . likewise , near the centre of the Milky Way , a cloudy bridge deck of methanol border a star glasshouse . The span of hard liquor is 288 billion miles wide .
It was n’t spilled after some Martian keg company . As new stars wake up — formed as clouds of throttle and junk crash — ethyl alcohol can attach to specks of floating detritus . As the dust strike toward the bud star , the alcohol heat , separates , and turns to gas . For stargazer , these alcoholic drink cloud can be a telling clue into how our magnanimous stars form .
Not to mention , intoxicant is an organic chemical compound : the building blocks of life . accord to Barry Turnerat the National Radio Astronomy Observatory , these alcoholic beverage clouds may “ aid us better understand how life might arise elsewhere in the cosmos . ”
Now , if you ’re wondering what these space hard drink may sample or smell like , Sagittarius B2 has an answer . The cloud stop ethyl formate , an ester that helps give raspberry their penchant — and reportedly smells like rum . It seems , then , that the center of our wandflower may taste and smell likeraspberry - season rum .
Scientists have n’t find if it match well with moon cheese .
