'Super alcohol' in space: Why methanetetrol excites scientists searching for extraterrestrial life

Methanetetrol has finally stepped out of theory and into the laboratory. The newly captured molecule, boasting four hydroxyl groups around one carbon, has long been the most evasive prey in prebiotic chemistry.

Lead author Joshua Marks joined forces with astrochemist Ryan Fortenberry at the University of Mississippi, experimentalist Ralf Kaiser at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, and computational modeler Alexander Mebel of Florida International University (FIU).

Their cross-continental effort snared an ortho acid, a chemical family so crowded with oxygen that members usually self-destruct before anyone can measure them.

Why scientists wanted methanetetrol

Methanetetrol is the only known alcohol bearing four hydroxyl groups on a single carbon atom, placing it in a chemical group once thought too unstable to isolate.

That singular architecture makes it an unusually sensitive marker for oxygen-rich reactions that may weave complex organics in cold space.

For decades, textbooks carried drawings of the compound with a footnote that it had never been observed.

Chemists could stabilize larger cousins by swapping the hydrogens for bulky groups, yet the bare-bones version always slipped away.

The new experiment matters because hydroxyl tails are reactive handles that stitch simple molecules into sugars, acids, and nucleobase fragments.

Catching the quadruple-hook variant sets a fresh benchmark for what sort of chemistry can occur on icy dust grains.

By proving the molecule’s viability, the study widens the menu of compounds that telescopes should search for inside star-forming clouds.

It also challenges long-standing rules that predicted any carbon with more than two hydroxyls would collapse back into a carbonyl.

Recreating methanetetrol in space-like lab

Kaiser’s group blasted a water-and-carbon-dioxide ice with electrons that mimic the secondary particles born of cosmic rays in space.

Warming the frost then released trace gases that were hit with vacuum ultraviolet light, letting a time-of-flight mass spectrometer pick out methanetetrol ions.

The ultraviolet photons carried just the right energy to knock an electron off the molecule without shattering it, a sweet spot calculated ahead of time by Mebel’s quantum models.

Those calculations told the team which photon energies would leave a fingerprint fragment at mass-to-charge 63.

Running the experiment with isotopically labeled ice, the researchers watched the fragment shift by exactly one atomic mass unit, confirming the identification.

Control runs without electron irradiation showed no signal, proving that radiation is the spark that assembles the molecule in the frigid matrix.

The method reproduces the slow cosmic chemistry that happens on interstellar dust over millions of years but compresses it into laboratory hours.

It demonstrates that radical pathways can build surprisingly elaborate structures under deep-space conditions.

Unstable but full of promise

“This is essentially a prebiotic concentrate,” exclaimed Fortenberry after the isolation. He views the molecule as a tiny chemical starter that can grow complexity if the environment provides water, energy, and time.

The catch is fragility: add a little heat and methanetetrol snaps into water, hydrogen peroxide, and other small oxidants. That volatility may be the very trait that makes it useful in the chemical relay race toward biomolecules.

Each breakup injects oxygen-bearing fragments that can drive further reactions, influencing redox balance, pH, and even a planet’s atmosphere. In a young world, such bursts could steer surface chemistry toward greater complexity.

In the laboratory, the molecule stayed intact only at cryogenic temperatures; room temperature spelled its demise.

That limitation mirrors the conditions in dark molecular clouds, where thermometers hover near -430°F and molecules can linger for millennia.

How methanetetrol moves in space

Astronomers recently detected carbonic acid, a likely parent of methanetetrol, inside the Sagittarius B2 cloud near the Milky Way’s center.

The discovery suggests that the raw materials for the new molecule already drift in regions that later collapse into stars and planets.

If cosmic rays can trigger the same radical steps outlined in the lab, methanetetrol should form and then sublime as young protostars heat their envelopes. Radio telescopes tuned to its predicted rotational lines could now chase that signal.

Because the molecule carries four oxygen atoms, its presence would mark locales where water ice and carbon dioxide intimately mix.

Those sites are prime real estate for oxygen-driven chemistry, a prerequisite for everything from amino acids to ozone.

Planetary researchers note that similar processes could unfold on comets and icy moons. Each time such a body swings closer to its star, trapped methanetetrol could vaporize and seed neighboring space with reactive fragments.

Why the finding is important

“The detection of the only alcohol with four hydroxyl groups at the same carbon atom pushes the experimental and detection capabilities to the ‘final frontier,’” said Kaiser, celebrating the technical leap.

He stressed that refining both instruments and calculations was essential to catch such a fleeting target.

The work plugs a gap in spectral databases used by observatories such as ALMA and JWST. Without a laboratory spectrum, telescopes can stare at a signal yet never identify the culprit.

By adding methanetetrol and its ion fragments to those catalogs, researchers give observers a new tool for mapping oxygen-rich niches. Each fresh detection narrows the hunt for environments where chemistry inches toward biology.

The breakthrough also shows that radical chemistry on ice can build molecules deemed impossible under Earth-like conditions.

That insight is likely to shift funding toward more low-temperature radiation experiments across the astrochemistry community.

What’s next for methanetetrol

Marks says the next step is to search for methanetetrol in hot molecular cores, where its distinctive rotational lines should appear around 200 GHz. Laboratory microwave measurements are already under way to lock down those frequencies.

Fortenberry’s group is also prospecting for heavier relatives in which one hydrogen is swapped for a methyl or amino group. Such derivatives could act as stepping-stones toward sugars or small peptides.

Meanwhile, upcoming probes like Europa Clipper carry mass spectrometers capable of sniffing ejected plumes. If methanetetrol or its fragments appear there, they would spotlight active radiation chemistry beneath the moon’s ice.

Every new detection stitches another thread into the tapestry of cosmic prebiotic chemistry, showing that even the most fragile molecules can survive long enough to reshape matter.

The study is published in Nature Communications.

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