Related papers: Origin of the Chemical Elements
Molecules are ubiquitous in space. They are necessary component in the creation of habitable planetary systems and can provide the basic building blocks of life. Solid-state processes are pivotal in the formation of molecules in space and…
Knowledge of the composition of material that will form planets is crucial to understand planetary diversity and the occurrence of potentially habitable planets. Ultimately, it is the chemistry in circumstellar disks that determines the…
Growing evidence shows that most stars in the Milky Way, including the Sun, are born in high-mass star-forming regions, but due to both observational and theoretical challenges, our understanding of their chemical evolution is much less…
Clusters of galaxies are massive enough to be considered representative samples of the Universe, and to retain all of the heavy elements synthesized in their constituent stars. Since most of these metals reside in hot plasma, X-ray…
Complex organics are now commonly found in meteorites, comets, asteroids, planetary satellites, and interplanetary dust particles. The chemical composition and possible origin of these organics are presented. Specifically, we discuss the…
Astrophysics is gaining increased attention from the particle and nuclear physics communities, as budget cuts, delays, and cancellations limit opportunities for breakthrough research at accelerator laboratories. Observations of cosmic rays…
In the first thousand seconds of its evolution the Universe was a primordial nuclear reactor synthesizing the nuclides D, $^3$He, $^4$He and $^7$Li. These messengers from the Big Bang provide a unique window on the early, hot, dense…
The article is an historical overview of some of the major contributions from different areas of Science with which, for centuries, it has been built up a scientific, sound and consistent vision of the atom. Some experiments that led us to…
We reconstruct the history of the cosmic star formation as well as the cosmic production of metals in the universe by means of detailed chemical evolution models for galaxies of different morphological types. We consider a picture of…
Due to their production sites, as well as to how they are processed and destroyed in stars, the light elements are excellent tools to investigate a number of crucial issues in modern astrophysics: from stellar structure and non-standard…
Understanding the origins and distribution of matter in the Universe is one of the most important quests in physics and astronomy. Themes range from astro-particle physics to chemical evolution in the Galaxy to cosmic nucleosynthesis and…
One overarching objective of science is to further our understanding of the universe, from its early stages to its current state and future evolution. This depends on gaining insight on the universe's most macroscopic components, for…
Any search for present or past life beyond Earth should consider the initial processes and related environmental controls that might have led to its start. As on Earth, such an understanding lies well beyond how simple organic molecules…
The Galaxy is in continuous elemental evolution. Since new elements produced by dying stars are delivered to the interstellar medium, the formation of new enerations of stars and planetary systems is influenced by this metal enrichment. We…
These lectures summarize our basic understanding of the emergence of cosmic structures, the epoch of first light, the survival of early substructure in present-day galaxy halos.
For several independent reasons, the idea that notorious sources of entropy could exist in the Universe has been recently revived. Taking advantage of a new framework accounting for non-equilibrium processes in cosmology, we explicitly…
Preliminary results of a new set of stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis calculations for massive stars are presented. These results were obtained with an extended reaction network up to Bi. The discussion focuses on the importance of…
Electron temperatures, densities, ionic and elemental abundances of helium, nitrogen, oxygen, argon, sulfur and neon were derived for a sample of bulge planetary nebulae, representative of its intermediate mass population. Using these…
Cosmological N-body hydrodynamic computations following atomic and molecular chemistry (e$^-$, H, H$^+$, H$^-$, He, He$^+$, He$^{++}$, D, D$^+$, H$_2$, H$_2^+$, HD, HeH$^+$), gas cooling, star formation and production of heavy elements (C,…
Our Sun and planetary system were born about 4.5 billion years ago. How did this happen and what is our heritage from these early times? This review tries to address these questions from an astrochemical point of view. On the one hand, we…