Astrochemistry: August 2016

We study the molecular abundance and spatial distribution of the simplest sugar alcohol, ethylene glycol (EG), the simplest sugar glycoladehyde (GA), and other chemically related complex organic species towards the massive star-forming region G31.41+0.31.

The abundance of key molecules determines the level of cooling that is necessary for the formation of stars and planetary systems. In this context, one needs to understand the details of the time dependent oxygen chemistry, leading to the formation of molecular oxygen and water.

Physicists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have succeeded in detecting a time-resolved supernova signal in the Earth's microfossil record.

Collisions of ice particles play an important role in the formation of planetesimals and comets. In recent work we showed, that CO2 ice behaves like silicates in collisions.

We develop a simple model to predict the radial distribution of planetesimal formation. The model is based on the observed growth of dust to mm-sized particles, which drift radially, pile-up, and form planetesimals where the stopping time and dust-to-gas ratio intersect the allowed region for streaming instability-induced gravitational collapse.

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have taken a big step toward the laboratory re-creation of the "RNA world," which is generally believed to have preceded modern life forms based on DNA and proteins.

Over the past five decades, radio astronomy has shown that molecular complexity is a natural outcome of interstellar chemistry, in particular in star forming regions.

Physicists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have succeeded in detecting a time-resolved supernova signal in the Earth's microfossil record.

O2 and O3 have been long considered the most robust individual biosignature gases in a planetary atmosphere, yet multiple mechanisms that may produce them in the absence of life have been described.

The determination of atmospheric structure and molecular abundances of planetary atmospheres via spectroscopy involves direct comparisons between models and data.

Binary systems with similar components are ideal laboratories which allow several physical processes to be tested, such as the possible chemical pattern imprinted by the planet formation process.