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posted by janrinok on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the god-fart dept.

Astronomers using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have made the first definitive interstellar detection of benzonitrile, an intriguing organic molecule.

Astronomers had a mystery on their hands. No matter where they looked, from inside the Milky Way to distant galaxies, they observed a puzzling glow of infrared light. This faint cosmic light, which presents itself as a series of spikes in the infrared spectrum, had no easily identifiable source. It seemed unrelated to any recognizable cosmic feature, like giant interstellar clouds, star-forming regions, or supernova remnants. It was ubiquitous and a bit baffling.

The likely culprit, scientists eventually deduced, was the intrinsic infrared emission from a class of organic molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which, scientists would later discover, are amazingly plentiful; nearly 10 percent of all the carbon in the universe is tied up in PAHs.

Even though, as a group, PAHs seemed to be the answer to this mystery, none of the hundreds of PAH molecules known to exist had ever been conclusively detected in interstellar space.

New data from the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) show, for the first time, the convincing radio fingerprints of a close cousin and chemical precursor to PAHs, the molecule benzonitrile (C₆H₅CN). This detection may finally provide the "smoking gun" that PAHs are indeed spread throughout interstellar space and account for the mysterious infrared light astronomers had been observing.

https://public.nrao.edu/news/2018-gbt-chemistry

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:52AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:52AM (#622106)

    A man walked up to a woman who was sitting on a park bench, watching her 9-year-old girl play. The man's appearance could only be described as 'creepy' and 'unsettling'; he was cockeyed, wore small glasses, and had a thin mustache. After staring at the woman for a few moments, the man finally spoke these words: "You know, I've been looking it, and... hehe!"

    Suddenly, the man instantly changed locations and was sitting on the grass, naked. The mother's child was sitting on top of him, also naked, and with the man's penis entering her. However, something was different about the girl's appearance; she was now incredibly obese, unlike previously; she had countless crater-like indentations on her buttocks, and the skin on the inside of said craters was a sickly greenish color; and finally, the craters on her skin were slowly leaking pus and blood.

    The man began thrusting, and every time he did so, he screamed, "Looking it!" These words were shouted again and again, and echoed throughout the park. Occasionally, the man would scream other phrases, such as 'Delicious!', at the same time as he was screaming other words; what was most odd was that it sounded as if he was screaming two entirely different things simultaneously, almost as if someone who sounded exactly like he did was speaking over him. The man's thrusting became increasingly rapid over time, and so too did his shouts. Finally, the man squeezed the girl's buttocks with as much strength as he could muster, and a vomit-inducing mixture of pus and blood spewed everywhere, accompanied by a high-pitched scream

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