Related papers: Prebiotic Fatty Acid Vesicles through Photochemica…
The UV environment is a key boundary condition for the origin of life. However, considerable uncertainty exists as to planetary conditions and hence surface UV at abiogenesis. Here, we present two-stream multi-layer clear-sky calculations…
Volatile organic molecules formed by photochemistry in the upper atmosphere of Titan can undergo condensation as pure ices in the stratosphere and the troposphere as well as condense as ice layers onto the organic aerosols that are visible…
The basic processes of the formation of the first stars in the primordial Universe are outlined and the implications for cosmological structure formation discussed. By employing theoretical and numerical models of cosmic structure evolution…
Ultraviolet (UV) processing in the insterstellar medium (ISM) induces the dehydrogenation of hydrocarbons. Aliphatics, including alkanes, are present in different interstellar environments, being prevalently formed in evolved stars; thus,…
Numerical simulations suggest that the first galaxies are formed in protogalactic halos with virial temperatures >= 10^4 K. It is likely that such halos are polluted with trace amounts of metals produced by the first generation of stars.…
The organic haze of aerosols that shrouds the Saturnian moon Titan has previously been studied by both observations and laboratory simulation experiments. Here we report the abiotic formation of amino acid precursors in complex organic…
The pancake collapse of pregalactic clouds under UV background radiation is explored with a one-dimensional sheet model. Here, attention is concentrated on elucidating the basic physics on the thermal evolution of pregalactic clouds exposed…
The formation of planets with gaseous envelopes takes place in protoplanetary accretion discs on time-scales of several millions of years. Small dust particles stick to each other to form pebbles, pebbles concentrate in the turbulent flow…
Superhydrophobcity is a well-known wetting phenomenon found in numerous plants and insects. It is achieved by the combination of the surfaces chemical properties and its surface roughness. Inspired by nature, numerous synthetic…
The emergence of membranous compartments (protocells) with encapsulated genetic material was a crucial step life's origin and evolution. The hot spring hypothesis for the origin of life suggests that protocells could have formed in hot…
Aromaticity is a common chemical functionalities in bioactive molecules. In interstellar and circumstellar environments benzene and other small aromatics are considered the precursor for more complex prebiotic molecules and they have shown…
Non-equilibrium conditions must have been crucial for the assembly of the first informational polymers of early life, but supporting their formation and continuous enrichment in a long-lasting environment. Here, we explore how gas bubbles…
Aqueous chemistry within carbonaceous planetesimals is promising for synthesizing prebiotic organic matter essential to all life. Meteorites derived from these planetesimals delivered these life building blocks to the early Earth,…
Formic acid is much more abundant in the solid state, both in interstellar ices and cometary ices, than in the interstellar gas (ice/gas ~ 10^{4}) and this point remains a puzzle. The goal of this work is to experimentally study ionization…
Formamide (NH$_2$CHO), a potential prebiotic precursor, has been proposed to play an important role in the context of origin of life on our planet. It has been observed in different environments in space including the protostellar regions…
Photoevaporation is an important dispersal mechanism for protoplanetary disks. We conduct hydrodynamic simulations coupled with ray-tracing radiative transfer and consistent thermochemistry to study photoevaporative winds driven by…
We propose a free energy expression accounting for the formation of spherical vesicles from planar lipidic membranes and derive a Fokker-Planck equation for the probability distribution describing the dynamics of vesicle formation. We found…
A key result of hydrogravitational dynamics cosmology relevant to astrobiology is the early formation of vast numbers of hot primordial-gas planets in million-solar-mass clumps as the dark matter of galaxies and the hosts of first life.…
Photochemistry has the potential to substantially impact the atmospheric composition of exoplanets with consequences on the radiative transfer, thermal structure and dynamics of the atmospheres, particularly in UV-rich stellar environments.…
Numerous geological features that could be evaporitic in origin have been identified on the surface of Titan. Although they seem to be water-ice poor, their main properties -chemical composition, thickness, stratification- are essentially…