Related papers: Astrobiology: An Astronomer's Perspective
Comets contain abundant amounts of organic and inorganic species. Many of the volatile molecules in comets have also been observed in the interstellar medium and some of them even with similar relative abundances, indicating formation under…
We explore how questions related to developing a sustainable human civilization can be cast in terms of astrobiology. In particular we show how ongoing astrobiological studies of the coupled relationship between life, planets and their…
The existence of life is one of the most fundamental problems of astrophysics. The intriguing existence of progressively complex and apparently improbable living beings should be a general tendency of life in the Universe. We are looking…
In this chapter we describe chemistry of the early atmosphere of the Earth during and shortly after its formation where there is little if any geological record. We review the arguments for a secondary origin of the terrestrial atmosphere,…
The isotopic compositions of terrestrial hydrogen and nitrogen are clearly different from those of the nebular gas from which the solar system formed, and also differ from most of cometary values. Terrestrial N and H isotopic compositions…
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…
A hard difficulty in Astrobiology is the precise definition of what life is. All living beings have a cellular structure, so it is not possible to have a broader concept of life hence the search for extraterrestrial life is restricted to…
Whereas the Solar System has Mars and Europa as the best candidates for finding fossil/extant life as we know it - based on complex carbon compounds and liquid water - the 263 (non-pulsar) planetary systems around other stars as known at 15…
Half a century has passed since the foundation of nuclear astrophysics. Since then, this discipline has reached its maturity. Today, nuclear astrophysics constitutes a multidisciplinary crucible of knowledge that combines the achievements…
The goal of the Ariel space mission is to observe a large and diversified population of transiting planets around a range of host star types to collect information on their atmospheric composition. The planetary bulk and atmospheric…
The emergence of life on the Earth has required a prior organic chemistry leading to the formation of prebiotic molecules. The origin and the evolution of the organic matter on the early Earth is not yet firmly understood. Several…
Understanding where elements were formed has been a key goal in astrophysics for nearly a century, with answers involving cosmology, stellar burning, and cosmic explosions. Since 1957, the origin of the heaviest elements (formed via the…
Planet Earth has evolved from an entirely anoxic planet with possibly a different tectonic regime to the oxygenated world with horizontal plate tectonics that we know today. For most of this time, Earth has been inhabited by a purely…
Observational cosmology is on the verge of new discoveries that will change the essence of our world-view. The matter concerns origin of initial conditions and physics of dark matter.
People usually smile when astrophysicists assert that we are sons of the stars, but human life confirms this sentence: about 65% of the mass of our body is made up of oxygen, carbon occurs in all organic life and is the basis of organic…
The origin of life on Earth involves the early appearance of an information-containing molecule such as RNA. The basic building blocks of RNA could have been delivered by carbon-rich meteorites, or produced in situ by processes beginning…
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…
Astrobiology is a scientific discipline that studies life in the Universe. We call it a discipline and not a science because some authors have cast doubts over its epistemological status by calling it 'a science without an object of study'.…
Models of planet formation are built on underlying physical processes. In order to make sense of the origin of the planets we must first understand the origin of their building blocks. This review comes in two parts. The first part presents…
Abundance patterns of the elements C, N, and O are sensitive probes of stellar nucleosynthesis processes and, in addition, O abundances are an important input for stellar age determinations. Understanding the nature of the observed…