Related papers: Interstellar Grains: 50 Years On
It is long debated if pre-biotic molecules are indeed present in the interstellar medium. Despite substantial works pointing to their existence, pre-biotic molecules are yet to be discovered with a complete confidence. In this paper, our…
Models of the chemical evolution of the interstellar medium, galaxies, and the Universe rely on our understanding of the amounts and chemical composition of the material returned by stars and supernovae. Stellar yields are obtained from…
In dense molecular clouds, interstellar grains are covered by mantles of iced molecules. The formation of the grain mantles has two important consequences: it removes species from the gas phase and promotes the synthesis of new molecules on…
There exists a number of astronomical spectral phenomena that have remained unidentified after decades of extensive observations. The diffuse interstellar bands, the 220 nm feature, unidentified infrared emission bands, extended red…
Our understanding of the structure, composition and evolution of galaxies has strongly improved in the last decades, mostly due to new results based on large spectroscopic and imaging surveys. In particular, the nature of ionized gas, its…
This meeting is entitled "A Century of Cosmology." But most of the papers being given here are based on work done very recently and there is really no attempt being made to critically review what has taken place in the last 90 or 100 years.…
I briefly review some concepts related to coarse-graining methods for the dynamics of soft matter systems and argue that such schemes will almost always need to telescope down the physical hierarchy of time-scales to a more compressed, but…
One of the most informative techniques of studying magnetic fields in molecular clouds is based on the use of starlight polarization and polarized emission arising from aligned dust. How reliable the interpretation of the polarization maps…
Grain growth experiments on thin metallic films have shown the geometric and topological characteristics of the grain structure to be universal and independent of many experimental conditions. The universal size distribution, however, is…
In the previous papers in this series, we found that radiative torques can play a major role in the alignment of grains with the interstellar magnetic field. Since the radiative torques can drive the grains to suprathermal rotational…
The study of the chemical evolution of glycine in the interstellar medium is one of challenging topics in astrochemistry. Here, we present the chemical modeling of glycine in hot cores using the state-of-the-art three-phase chemical model…
The optical and magnetic properties of dust grains are reviewed, as they relate to the problem of interstellar grain alignment. Grain geometry plays an important role in determining the optical properties, and scattering and absorption of…
The compositions of planet-forming disks are set by a combination of material inherited from the interstellar medium and material reprocessed during disk formation and evolution. Indeed, comets and primitive meteorites exhibit…
The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes are one of the major transitions in the evolution of life on earth. One of its most interesting aspects is the emergence of cellular organelles, their dynamics, their functions, and their…
Recent years have witnessed the detection of an increasing number of complex organic molecules in interstellar space, some of them being of prebiotic interest. Disentangling the origin of interstellar prebiotic chemistry and its connection…
A composite dust grain model which simultaneously explains the observed interstellar extinction, polarization, IR emission and the abundance constraints, is required. We present a composite grain model, which is made up of a host silicate…
I have used the Hipparcos Input Catalog, together with Kurucz model stellar atmospheres, and information on the strength of the interstellar extinction, to create a model of the expected intensity and spectral distribution of the local…
Static granular packings are model hard-sphere glass formers. The nature of glass transition has remained a hotly debated issue. We review recent experimental progresses in using granular materials to study glass transitions. We focus on…
The interpretation of observations over different wavelength domains, which now exist over a large fraction of the sky, will be used to determine relationships between a nebula and its' illuminating source. The illuminating source of a high…
The study of comets affords a unique window into the birth, infancy, and subsequent history of the solar system. There is strong evidence that comets incorporated pristine interstellar material as well as processed nebular matter, providing…