Cosmic 'Booze' Created In Quantum Brewery

astroengine writes "The intense cold of interstellar space shouldn't be conducive to chemical reactions between methanol and hydroxyl radicals -- two molecules that are known to exist in stellar nurseries and cold interstellar clouds -- and yet the product of this reaction, methoxy radicals, are found in abundance throughout the universe. What is creating them? In a paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry (abstract), Dwayne Heard and colleagues from the University of Leeds think that int...