{"id":244057,"date":"2026-09-15T05:04:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T10:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/more-than-120-molecular-species-found-in-giant-cloud-near-milky-ways-center"},"modified":"2026-09-15T05:04:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T10:04:00","slug":"more-than-120-molecular-species-found-in-giant-cloud-near-milky-ways-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/more-than-120-molecular-species-found-in-giant-cloud-near-milky-ways-center","title":{"rendered":"More than 120 molecular species found in giant cloud near Milky Way\u2019s center"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/more-than-120-molecular-species-found-in-giant-cloud-near-milky-ways-center2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This cloud contains roughly 40% of all molecules ever detected in interstellar space, including many linked to the chemical building blocks of life. Interestingly, it is not actively forming stars. Instead, its chemical richness comes from a combination of physical and chemical properties. The cloud is warm enough to sustain plenty of chemical activity, but the molecules emit significantly cleaner, easier-to-read \u201ccool\u201d signals.<\/p>\n<p>The cloud is also thought to have been stirred up by low-velocity shock waves, likely from colliding gas clouds. The shock waves might violently blast icy coatings off dust grains, releasing a wide variety of molecules that had been frozen inside the ice. This leaves more of these molecules in the gas phase, boosting detectability. Astronomers wondered whether this rare combination was unique to this cloud.<\/p>\n<p>A goldmine Now, in a new study, astronomers have reported another molecular cloud near the Milky Way\u2019s center and call it a \u201cnew goldmine for astrochemistry.\u201d G+0.633 sits just 32 light-years (190 trillion miles) from G+0.693 and shares many similarities with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This cloud contains roughly 40% of all molecules ever detected in interstellar space, including many linked to the chemical building blocks of life. Interestingly, it is not actively forming stars. Instead, its chemical richness comes from a combination of physical and chemical properties. The cloud is warm enough to sustain plenty of chemical activity, but [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}