Deep space contains all the ingredients for alcopops

Life really does get better with alcohol, according to astronomers who have found a vast cloud of it in deep space.

It was thought the giant gas clouds contained little but hydrogen, but new results show they are more complex.

Life really does get better with ­alcohol, according to astronomers who have found a vast cloud of it in deep space — and they suggest it may help kick-start life.

The alcohol, sugars and nitrogen-bearing compounds needed to make proteins were found using Earth’s most powerful new radio telescope to probe the giant clouds of gas from which stars form.

Besides alcohol, it has discovered a simple sugar called glycolaldehyde, prompting astrono­mers to joke about finding the ingredients of alcopops in space.

One calculated that a single gas cloud contained alcohol equivalent to thousands of billions of bottles of whisky. Many other complex chemicals have also emerged.

The radio telescope also found ethylene ­glycol, which we know as antifreeze, and acetone, used in nail varnish remover.

It was thought the giant gas clouds contained little but hydrogen, but new results show they are more complex.

“The story emerging is of ­organic molecules forming in space and becoming the building blocks of comets and planets,” said Ewine van Dishoeck, professor of molecular astrophysics at Leiden University in Holland, who will speak at next week’s Cheltenham Science Festival. “Those chemicals, plus water, are carried to young planets by comets and may help start life.”

The findings came from surveys of the stars by Alma, a radio-telescope comprising 66 anten­nae across 15.5sq km of a plateau 4875m up in the Chilean Andes.

The Sunday Times