Since the discovery of hydrocarbon lakes and seas on Saturn’s moon Titan, there has been much speculation on whether these could serve as suitable environments to host exotic life.
The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life.
Marine habitability for complex life on Earth and Earth-like planets requires bioavailable nutrients and dissolved oxygen. The cycling of nutrients and oxygen is controlled by physical ocean circulation.
Ceres hosts notable aliphatic-organic concentrations, ranging from approximately 5 to >30 weight % in specific surface areas.
Membraneless coacervate microdroplets have long been proposed as model protocells as they can grow, divide, and concentrate RNA by natural partitioning.
Knowledge of the nucleosynthetic isotope composition of the outermost protoplanetary disk is critical to understand the formation and early dynamical evolution of the Solar System.
