Scientists have discovered booze in space!
Well, not booze, exactly. But they did find alcohol: ethyl alcohol, to be precise, the active ingredient in all major alcoholic drinks (antifreeze Jell-O shots, quite obviously, are exempted from this category). Three British scientists, Drs. Tom Millar, Geoffrey MacDonald and Rolf Habing, discovered this interstellar Everclear floating in a gas cloud in the constellation of Aquila (sign of the Eagle... the mascot of Anheuser-Busch! Hmmmmm).
Dr. Millar and his compatriots have estimated the size of this gas cloud at approximately 1,000 times the diameter of our own solar system; there's enough alcohol out there, they say, to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer. These guys are British, mind you; if you were to translate this in terms of American beer (which the British, with some justification, regard as fermented club soda), the amount of potential brewski just about doubles.
In human terms: remember that double-keg party you threw at the end of your Junior year in college? Imagine throwing that same party every eight hours for the next 30 billion years. You'd STILL have beer left over. And boy, would YOUR bathroom be a mess! Simply put, no one could ever drink 400 trillion trillion pints of beer, except maybe Oklahoma State University football fans.
The sheer volume of all this alcohol leads to the question of how it managed to get out there in the first place. Despite the neat-o simplifying effect it has on the human brain, ethyl alcohol is a reasonably complex molecule: two carbon atoms, five hydrogen atoms, and a hydroxyl radical, all cavorting together in beery brotherhood. It's not a compound that is likely to spontaneously arise out of the cold depths of space. This leads to some intriguing speculation: What is this cloud?
1. It is God's hooch. After all, He worked for six days creating the Universe, and on the seventh day, He rested. And after you've had a hard week at the office, don't YOU grab a beer? Since man is made in God's image, it could be that this cloud is the remaining evidence of the first, best, biggest Miller Time.
2. It is Purgatory ("400 trillion trillion bottles of beer on the wall, 400 trillion trillion bottles of beer! Take one down, pass it around, 399,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall!" Auggggh, what a scary thought!)
3. It is proof of an undeniably highly-advanced but chronically dipsomaniacal alien society. This particular theory is shaky, however: it's reasonable to assume that if the aliens were going to construct a nebula of alcohol, they'd also have large clouds of pizza and pretzels nearby for sustenance. Advanced spectral analysis has yet to locate them.
The truth of the matter, however, is far more prosaic. In the middle of this gas cloud is a young and no doubt quite inebriated star. As the star heats up and contracts, sucking the dust and gas of the cloud into a smaller area, complex molecules form as a result of greater inter-reaction between the elements. Ethyl alcohol forms on small motes of dust in the cloud, and then, as the motes angle in closer towards the star and heat up, the alcohol is released from the motes in gaseous form. And there you have it: an alcohol cloud. Or, as Dave Bowman might say in 2001, "My God! It's full of booze!"
Enough with the science lesson, you say. Just tell me how to GET there! Sorry, guys. You can't get there from here. The gas cloud (which, by the way, has the utterly enchanting name of "G34.3"
is 10,000 light years away: 58 quadrillion miles. Even if you hijacked the Space Shuttle and headed out with thrusters on full, by the time you got there, the aforementioned guy in Purgatory would be done with his tune about the bottles of beer on the wall. You'd have had time to work up a mighty powerful thirst, but you'd also be pushing up daisies. Stiffer than Bob Dole after Viagra. A McDonald's for maggots. In short, you'd be a dead dude.
No, the Space Beer Cloud will have to wait for the far future, when men can leap through the universe at warp speed. One can only imagine what they will do when they get there:
Captain Kirk: My....GOD! Sulu! What....is....THAT?
Sulu: It's a free-floating cloud of alcohol, sir.
Kirk: And we've just run out of Romulan Ale! Could it be a trap, Bones?
Doctor McCoy: Dammit, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a distiller!
Kirk: Scotty has just sent me an urgent message saying that we need that booze! Woohoo, "Jim Beam" me up, Scotty! But using the transporter would filter out all the intoxicants, and if we attempt to fly through that cloud, we'll all be too drunk to drive!
Spock: May I remind you, Captain, that I am a Vulcan. We are a race of designated drivers.
Kirk: Well, all righty, then! Spock, drive us through! Scotty and Bones and I will take our new shuttlecraft to the very center of the cloud. And in honour of this remarkable event, we will name this shuttlecraft...
..."Moonshine"!
Well, not booze, exactly. But they did find alcohol: ethyl alcohol, to be precise, the active ingredient in all major alcoholic drinks (antifreeze Jell-O shots, quite obviously, are exempted from this category). Three British scientists, Drs. Tom Millar, Geoffrey MacDonald and Rolf Habing, discovered this interstellar Everclear floating in a gas cloud in the constellation of Aquila (sign of the Eagle... the mascot of Anheuser-Busch! Hmmmmm).
Dr. Millar and his compatriots have estimated the size of this gas cloud at approximately 1,000 times the diameter of our own solar system; there's enough alcohol out there, they say, to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer. These guys are British, mind you; if you were to translate this in terms of American beer (which the British, with some justification, regard as fermented club soda), the amount of potential brewski just about doubles.
In human terms: remember that double-keg party you threw at the end of your Junior year in college? Imagine throwing that same party every eight hours for the next 30 billion years. You'd STILL have beer left over. And boy, would YOUR bathroom be a mess! Simply put, no one could ever drink 400 trillion trillion pints of beer, except maybe Oklahoma State University football fans.
The sheer volume of all this alcohol leads to the question of how it managed to get out there in the first place. Despite the neat-o simplifying effect it has on the human brain, ethyl alcohol is a reasonably complex molecule: two carbon atoms, five hydrogen atoms, and a hydroxyl radical, all cavorting together in beery brotherhood. It's not a compound that is likely to spontaneously arise out of the cold depths of space. This leads to some intriguing speculation: What is this cloud?
1. It is God's hooch. After all, He worked for six days creating the Universe, and on the seventh day, He rested. And after you've had a hard week at the office, don't YOU grab a beer? Since man is made in God's image, it could be that this cloud is the remaining evidence of the first, best, biggest Miller Time.
2. It is Purgatory ("400 trillion trillion bottles of beer on the wall, 400 trillion trillion bottles of beer! Take one down, pass it around, 399,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall!" Auggggh, what a scary thought!)
3. It is proof of an undeniably highly-advanced but chronically dipsomaniacal alien society. This particular theory is shaky, however: it's reasonable to assume that if the aliens were going to construct a nebula of alcohol, they'd also have large clouds of pizza and pretzels nearby for sustenance. Advanced spectral analysis has yet to locate them.
The truth of the matter, however, is far more prosaic. In the middle of this gas cloud is a young and no doubt quite inebriated star. As the star heats up and contracts, sucking the dust and gas of the cloud into a smaller area, complex molecules form as a result of greater inter-reaction between the elements. Ethyl alcohol forms on small motes of dust in the cloud, and then, as the motes angle in closer towards the star and heat up, the alcohol is released from the motes in gaseous form. And there you have it: an alcohol cloud. Or, as Dave Bowman might say in 2001, "My God! It's full of booze!"
Enough with the science lesson, you say. Just tell me how to GET there! Sorry, guys. You can't get there from here. The gas cloud (which, by the way, has the utterly enchanting name of "G34.3"
is 10,000 light years away: 58 quadrillion miles. Even if you hijacked the Space Shuttle and headed out with thrusters on full, by the time you got there, the aforementioned guy in Purgatory would be done with his tune about the bottles of beer on the wall. You'd have had time to work up a mighty powerful thirst, but you'd also be pushing up daisies. Stiffer than Bob Dole after Viagra. A McDonald's for maggots. In short, you'd be a dead dude.No, the Space Beer Cloud will have to wait for the far future, when men can leap through the universe at warp speed. One can only imagine what they will do when they get there:
Captain Kirk: My....GOD! Sulu! What....is....THAT?
Sulu: It's a free-floating cloud of alcohol, sir.
Kirk: And we've just run out of Romulan Ale! Could it be a trap, Bones?
Doctor McCoy: Dammit, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a distiller!
Kirk: Scotty has just sent me an urgent message saying that we need that booze! Woohoo, "Jim Beam" me up, Scotty! But using the transporter would filter out all the intoxicants, and if we attempt to fly through that cloud, we'll all be too drunk to drive!
Spock: May I remind you, Captain, that I am a Vulcan. We are a race of designated drivers.
Kirk: Well, all righty, then! Spock, drive us through! Scotty and Bones and I will take our new shuttlecraft to the very center of the cloud. And in honour of this remarkable event, we will name this shuttlecraft...
..."Moonshine"!
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