The center of our galaxy smells like rum and tastes like raspberries.

In 2009, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy used a massive telescope in Spain to look at a gas cloud called Sagittarius B2. This cloud is sitting right near the middle of the Milky Way, about 26,000 light-years away from us. By looking at the radio waves coming from the cloud, they found the 'fingerprint' of a chemical called ethyl formate.On Earth, this chemical is what makes a raspberry taste like a raspberry. It is also the main reason rum has its strong scent. The cloud is so big that it contains enough of this stuff to fill billions and billions of bottles. It is part of a huge area where new stars are being born every day.To find these smells, researchers use a method called spectroscopy. Every molecule in space wobbles and spins in its own special way, which sends out a unique signal. By catching these signals with radio telescopes, scientists can tell exactly what a cloud is made of without ever leaving Earth.While the raspberry smell is cool, the cloud also contains dangerous chemicals like propyl cyanide, which is poisonous. Finding these complex chemicals helps scientists understand how the building blocks of life might form in deep space. It shows that the universe is full of the ingredients needed for interesting chemistry.