Astronomers have discovered that the space between stars is filled with colossal amounts of aliphatic hydrocarbons that can stick to spaceships during travel.
At first glance, interstellar space looks like a completely empty region. However, in reality, it is a vast territory containing traces of electromagnetic radiation and clouds of matter. A new study by researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and researchers from Ege University sheds light on what stardust is made of.
A team of Australian and Turkish scientists have found that, among other things, interstellar matter also exists in the form of aliphatic hydrocarbons. These are fatty and highly toxic compounds that will settle on board any spacecraft that passes through a cloud of space debris. Professor Tim Schmidt, one of the co-authors of the study, notes that stardust can adhere to a ship like a sticky shell. “Part of it is hydrocarbons, and part is ordinary silicates, of which, for example, earth's sand is composed. And all of this is carried across the galaxy by the solar wind,”he explains.
Schmidt and his colleagues are using spectroscopy to try to determine how these substances react to different types of light radiation. This data can be used to accurately calculate how many aliphatic hydrocarbons and their derivatives are currently in interstellar space. This abundance is due to the fact that carbon and hydrogen are one of the main "building blocks" of the universe.
Vasily Makarov