…enough space grease in our Milky Way for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of dirty butter.

It looks cold, dark and empty, but astronomers have revealed that interstellar space is permeated with a fine mist of grease-like molecules.

The study provides the most precise estimate yet of the amount of “space grease” in the Milky Way, by recreating the carbon-based compounds in the laboratory. The Australian-Turkish team discovered more than expected: 10 billion trillion trillion tonnes of gloop, or enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter.

Prof Tim Schmidt, a chemist at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and co-author of the study, said that the windscreen of a future spaceship travelling through interstellar space might be expected to get a sticky coating.

“Amongst other stuff it’ll run into is interstellar dust, which is partly grease, partly soot and partly silicates like sand,” he said, adding that the grease is swept away within our own solar system by the solar wind.

The findings bring scientists closer to figuring out the total amount of carbon in interstellar space, which fuels the formation of stars, planets and is essential for life.

Full report

Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion.

Divine Angel said:

Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion.

dammit..

I’ll be humming that all day now!

What can I say except you’re welcome

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Divine Angel said:

Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion.

dammit..

I’ll be humming that all day now!

IDGI

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Divine Angel said:

Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion.

dammit..

I’ll be humming that all day now!

Huh. You’re lucky. Mrs m has been playing that in the band for the stage show. Practicing all the pieces at home.

Grease in space is good. Life on Earth is just (toxic) grease + water + aromatics with nitrogen + sugars + phosphate with a bis of sulfur throwm in.

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Divine Angel said:

Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion.

dammit..

I’ll be humming that all day now!

Huh. You’re lucky. Mrs m has been playing that in the band for the stage show. Practicing all the pieces at home.

Grease in space is good. Life on Earth is just (toxic) grease + water + aromatics with nitrogen + sugars + phosphate with a bis of sulfur thrown in.

Or to put it another way. Take a human, remove the bones and teeth, dry it out, mash it up, heat it up in an inert atmosphere, and what you get is space grease.

Or to put it yet another way, it gives our something to eat on long space journeys.

> Schmidt and colleagues recreated in the laboratory the process by which greasy carbon forms in the outflows of carbon stars. The material was collected and analysed using spectroscopy to work out how strongly it absorbed light of certain wavelengths.

Real physical experiments beat math simulations every time. I’d love to know how they did those experiments.

> the grease is swept away within our own solar system by the solar wind.

Close enough. It has nothing to do with the modern solar wind, not nearly strong enough, and a lot to do with shock heating in the earliest stages of asteroid formation.

The organic composition of intersellar dust grains has been one of the very greatest unknowns in science for more than 100 years.

mollwollfumble said:

Or to put it yet another way, it gives our something to eat on long space journeys.

Good point :)

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

Or to put it yet another way, it gives our something to eat on long space journeys.

Good point :)

>“This space grease is not the kind of thing you’d want to spread on a slice of toast,” said Schmidt. “It’s dirty, likely toxic and only forms in the environment of interstellar space – and our laboratory.”

Bubblecar said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

Or to put it yet another way, it gives our something to eat on long space journeys.

Good point :)

>“This space grease is not the kind of thing you’d want to spread on a slice of toast,” said Schmidt. “It’s dirty, likely toxic and only forms in the environment of interstellar space – and our laboratory.”

I’m sure we can find some bacteria that will eat it.

There is considerable uncertainty as to the amount of carbon incorporated in interstellar dust. The aliphatic component of the carbonaceous dust is of particular interest because it produces a significant 3.4 μm absorption feature when viewed against a background radiation source. The optical depth of the 3.4 μm absorption feature is related to the number of aliphatic carbon C-H bonds along the line of sight. It is possible to estimate the column density of carbon locked up in the aliphatic hydrocarbon component of interstellar dust from quantitative analysis of the 3.4 μm interstellar absorption feature providing that the absorption coefficient of aliphatic hydrocarbons incorporated in the interstellar dust is known. We report laboratory analogues of interstellar dust by experimentally mimicking interstellar/circumstellar conditions. The resultant spectra of these dust analogues closely match those from astronomical observations. Measurements of the absorption coefficient of aliphatic hydrocarbons incorporated in the analogues were carried out by a procedure combining FTIR and 13C NMR spectroscopies. The absorption coefficients obtained for both interstellar analogues were found to be in close agreement (4.76(8) × 10−18 cm group−1 and 4.69(14) × 10−18 cm group−1), less than half those obtained in studies using small aliphatic molecules. The results thus obtained permit direct calibration of the astronomical observations, providing rigorous estimates of the amount of aliphatic carbon in the interstellar medium.

SCIENCE said:

There is considerable uncertainty as to the amount of carbon incorporated in interstellar dust. The aliphatic component of the carbonaceous dust is of particular interest because it produces a significant 3.4 μm absorption feature when viewed against a background radiation source. The optical depth of the 3.4 μm absorption feature is related to the number of aliphatic carbon C-H bonds along the line of sight. It is possible to estimate the column density of carbon locked up in the aliphatic hydrocarbon component of interstellar dust from quantitative analysis of the 3.4 μm interstellar absorption feature providing that the absorption coefficient of aliphatic hydrocarbons incorporated in the interstellar dust is known. We report laboratory analogues of interstellar dust by experimentally mimicking interstellar/circumstellar conditions. The resultant spectra of these dust analogues closely match those from astronomical observations. Measurements of the absorption coefficient of aliphatic hydrocarbons incorporated in the analogues were carried out by a procedure combining FTIR and 13C NMR spectroscopies. The absorption coefficients obtained for both interstellar analogues were found to be in close agreement (4.76(8) × 10−18 cm group−1 and 4.69(14) × 10−18 cm group−1), less than half those obtained in studies using small aliphatic molecules. The results thus obtained permit direct calibration of the astronomical observations, providing rigorous estimates of the amount of aliphatic carbon in the interstellar medium.

> The aliphatic component of the carbonaceous dust is of particular interest because it produces a significant 3.4 μm absorption feature when viewed against a background radiation source.

Not according to what I’ve read. Attempts to explain the absorption features in the past have been many, and unsuccessful. Aromatic rather than aliphatic components are a better fit.

> The aliphatic component of the carbonaceous dust is of particular interest because it produces a significant 3.4 μm absorption feature when viewed against a background radiation source. The optical depth of the 3.4 μm absorption feature is related to the number of aliphatic carbon C-H bonds along the line of sight. It is possible to estimate the column density of carbon locked up in the aliphatic hydrocarbon component of interstellar dust from quantitative analysis of the 3.4 μm interstellar absorption feature providing that the absorption coefficient of aliphatic hydrocarbons incorporated in the interstellar dust is known.

Oh, my apologies. I had the wrong spectral line.

> There is a discrepancy between the results for small molecules, for which the structure is well defined and for dust analogues, for which the structure is ill-defined. The integrated absorption coefficient, per aliphatic group (one carbon atom), for the interstellar dust analogues is found to be less than half that of the small molecules.

Yes.

> The interstellar dust analogues were produced from acety-
lene (HC≡CH) and isoprene (H2C=C(CH3)-CH=CH2).

Strong in double and triple bonds, good.

The result has a lot of graphite, and a really good match for the 3.4 micron line of the interstellar medium. Good work.

Could you use it as a fuel source collecting it with a Bussard ramjet

Cymek said:

Could you use it as a fuel source collecting it with a Bussard ramjet

I hope so. We normally talking about collecting hydrogen with a Bussard ramjet.

mollwollfumble said:

Cymek said:

Could you use it as a fuel source collecting it with a Bussard ramjet

I hope so. We normally talking about collecting hydrogen with a Bussard ramjet.

Yes I was wondering if you could collect it in the same manner and would it be unusable as a fuel source, might be useful in interstellar flight