Interstellar cloud

Large radio telescopes scan the intensity in the sky of particular frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, which are characteristic of certain molecules' spectra.

Radio telescopes can also scan over the frequencies from one point in the map, recording the intensities of each type of molecule.

However, organic molecules were observed in the spectra that scientists would not have expected to find under these conditions, such as formaldehyde, methanol, and vinyl alcohol.

The reactions needed to create such substances are familiar to scientists only at the much higher temperatures and pressures of earth and earth-based laboratories.

They are detected primarily in the 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen,[6] and typically have a lower portion of heavy elements than is normal for interstellar clouds in the Milky Way.