This week, organic molecules floating in space.

Nobody thought initially that there was anything out there in space except for hydrogen and maybe a little bit of helium.

And encouraging scientific thinking in schools.

We come from monkeys, well apes. Not monkeys, apes.

But there we...

My dad comes from gorillas.

We come from nukes.

Plus treating traumatic brain injury

and the latest from New Horizons.

This is the nature podcast for July the 16th, 2015.

I'm Kerry Smith.

And I'm Adam Levy.

In 1919, graduate student Mary Leah Hager at the University of California found some strange

features in the light coming from distant stars. Light travels a long way to get to Earth, and certain

wavelengths are absorbed by whatever's floating around in between.

Hager noticed some unique patterns, which seemed to be caused when the light was absorbed by clouds of material in interstellar space.

These patterns became known as the diffuse interstellar bands.

Usually scientists can match these absorption patterns with known molecules to identify

what the material is made of. But these bands didn't match anything. Fast forward a few decades

to the 80s and 90s, and scientists discovered a potential molecular match. But they've had to wait

till now to conclusively identify the culprit, as John

Meyer from the University of Basel in Switzerland explained to Lizzie Gibney.

...