[astro-ph.GA] Numerous attempts to detect glycine, a simple amino acid and a key building block of proteins in all life on Earth, in the interstellar medium have so far been unsuccessful in spite of the fact that it is present in meteorites, comets and asteroids.
Glycine is conformationally diverse, existing in eight different forms, and the aim is to show that interconversions, in the dark, are governed by quantum mechanical tunnelling at temperatures from 300 K down to 10 K and to compute the rate at which these changes occur resulting in recommendations to maximise a successful outcome.
Judith Wurmel, John M. Simmie
Comments: 7 pages
Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
Cite as: arXiv:2609.17243 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2609.17243v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.17243
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Submission history
From: John Simmie
[v1] Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:24:23 UTC (256 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.17243
Astrobiology,
