Interstellar cloud conditions yield ‘impossible molecule’

For the first time, methanetriol has been synthesised and characterised in the lab.

The molecule, which has three hydroxyl groups linked to a single carbon atom, is especially unstable under ambient conditions, because it tends to quickly react with other species or decompose and decay into more stable structures. The existence of methanetriol – conventionally known as orthoformic acid ‘had been hypothesised for decades’, according to lead author Ralf Kaiser from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in Honolulu, US. ‘It took the unique environment of [simulated] interstellar ices to preserve this fragile molecule,’ he says.