Related papers: Our astrochemical heritage
Modern numerical simulations of the formation of the first stars predict that the first stars formed in multiples. In those cases, the chemical yields of multiple supernova explosions may have contributed to the formation of a next…
Stars are fossils that retain the history of their host galaxies. Elements heavier than helium are created inside stars and are ejected when they die. From the spatial distribution of elements in galaxies, it is therefore possible to…
This paper presents a review of ideas that interconnect Astrochemistry and Galactic Dynamics. Since these two areas are vast and not recent, each one has already been covered separately by several reviews. After a general historical…
In the first two years of operation JWST has delivered key new insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early Universe. By combining imaging with spectroscopy, we discovered and characterised the first generation of…
The decomposition of the Solar system abundances of heavy isotopes into their s- and r- components plays a key role in our understanding of the corresponding nuclear processes and the physics and evolution of their astrophysical sites. We…
The goal of planet formation as a field of study is not only to provide the understanding of how planets come into existence. It is also an interdisciplinary bridge which links astronomy to geology and mineralogy. Recent observations of…
Elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, collectively termed metals, were created inside stars and dispersed through space at the final stages of stellar evolution. The relative amounts of different isotopes (variants of the same element…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
Kant and Laplace suggested the Solar System formed from a rotating gaseous disk in the 18th century, but convincing evidence that young stars are indeed surrounded by such disks was not presented for another 200 years. As we move into the…
From the time the first stars formed over 13 billion years ago to the present, star formation has had an unexpectedly dynamic history. At first, the star formation rate density increased dramatically, reaching a peak 10 billion years ago…
Stars like our Sun and planets like our Earth form in dense regions within interstellar molecular clouds, called pre-stellar cores (PSCs). PSCs provide the initial conditions in the process of star and planet formation. In the past 15…
The observational evidence that planetary systems can be very different from each other, suggests that their dynamical histories were very diverse, probably as a result of a strong sensitivity to the initial conditions. Severe dynamical…
The chemical reservoir within protoplanetary disks has a direct impact on planetary compositions and the potential for life. A long-lived carbon-and nitrogen-rich chemistry at cold temperatures (<=50K) is observed within cold and evolved…
Essentially everything of astronomical interest is either part of a galaxy, or from a galaxy, or otherwise relevant to the origin or evolution of galaxies. Diverse examples are that the isotropic composition of meteorites provides clues to…
About 4.6 billion years ago, some event disturbed a cloud of gas and dust, triggering the gravitational collapse that led to the formation of the solar system. A core-collapse supernova, whose shock wave is capable of compressing such a…
Carbonaceous chondrites are samples from planetesimals that formed 2-4 million years after solar system formation began. They consist of distinct dust components formed at different times and locations in the accretion disk and whose…
The most intriguing question related to the chemical evolution of protoplanetary disks is the genesis of pre-biotic organic molecules in the planet-forming zone. In this contribution we briefly review current observational knowledge of…
In studies of the oldest solar system bodies - comets and asteroids - it is their fragments - meteoroids - that provide the most accessible planetary material for detailed laboratory analysis in the form of dust particles or meteorites.…
A chromospheric age distribution of 552 late-type dwarfs is transformed into a star formation history by the application of scale height corrections, stellar evolutionary corrections and volume corrections. We show that the disk of our…
A new theoretical hypothesis on the origin and formation of the solar and extrasolar planetary systems is summarized and briefly discussed in the light of recent detections of extrasolar planets, and studies of shock wave interaction with…