Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more! You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Astronomers studying the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS have discovered the comet is unusually rich in alcohol — a chemical clue that could reveal how planets and icy bodies form around other stars. Using the powerful radio antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, researchers detected extremely strong signals of methanol (CH3OH), a simple alcohol molecule, in the comet's expanding cloud of gas. As 3I/ATLAS approached the sun and sunlight warmed its icy surface, it released gas and dust, forming a glowing halo — or coma — around its core, which allowed ALMA to analyze the comet's chemical composition in detail. The measurements show that methanol is far more abundant, relative to hydrogen cyanide, than astronomers typically see in comets from our own solar system.…