Grease In Space

The galaxy is rich in grease-like molecules, according to an Australian-Turkish team. Astronomers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney (UNSW), and Ege University in Turkey used a laboratory to manufacture material with the same properties as interstellar dust and used their results to estimate the amount of 'space grease' found in the Milky Way. Their results appear in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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Credit: D. Young (2011), The Galactic Center. Flickr – CreativeCommons

An illustration of the structure of a greasy carbon molecule, set against an image of the galactic centre, where this material has been detected. Carbon is represented as grey spheres and hydrogen as white spheres.

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The dust and gas in galaxies and between stars, and especially how ultraviolet light interacts with soot-like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.