Related papers: UV Transmission in Natural Waters on Prebiotic Ear…
Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is common to most planetary environments, and could play a key role in the chemistry of molecules relevant to abiogenesis (prebiotic chemistry). In this work, we explore the impact of UV light on prebiotic…
Potentially-habitable planets orbiting M-dwarfs are of intense astrobiological interest because they are the only rocky worlds accessible to biosignature search over the next 10+ years due to a confluence of observational effects.…
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…
A key challenge in origin-of-life studies is understanding the environmental conditions on early Earth under which abiogenesis occurred. While some constraints do exist (e.g., zircon evidence for surface liquid water), relatively few…
Recent findings suggest Mars may have been a clement environment for the emergence of life, and may even have compared favorably to Earth in this regard. These findings have revived interest in the hypothesis that prebiotically important…
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…
Given that the macromolecular building blocks of life were likely produced photochemically in the presence of ultraviolet (UV) light, we identify some general constraints on which stars produce sufficient UV for this photochemistry. We…
A key challenge in origins-of-life studies is estimating the abundances of species relevant to the chemical pathways proposed to have contributed to the emergence of life on early Earth. Dissolved nitrogen oxide anions (NO$_{X}^{-}$), in…
Ultraviolet radiation is known to inhibit photosynthesis, induce DNA destruction and cause damage to a wide variety of proteins and lipids. In particular, UV radiation between 200-300 nm becomes energetically very damaging to most of the…
The driving force behind the origin and evolution of life has been the thermodynamic imperative of increasing the entropy production of the biosphere through increasing the global solar photon dissipation rate. In the upper atmosphere of…
The UV environment of a host star affects the photochemistry in the atmosphere, and ultimately the surface UV environment for terrestrial planets and therefore the conditions for the origin and evolution of life. We model the surface UV…
There are two dominant and contrasting classes of origin of life scenarios: those predicting that life emerged in submarine hydrothermal systems, where chemical disequilibrium can provide an energy source for nascent life; and those…
An ancient repertoire of UV absorbing pigments which survive today in the phylogenetically oldest extant photosynthetic organisms the cyanobacteria point to a direction in evolutionary adaptation of the pigments and their associated biota…
The growth of luminous structures and the building blocks of life in the Universe began as primordial gas was processed in stars and mixed at galactic scales. The mechanisms responsible for this development are not well understood and have…
During the last decade, the hypothesis that one or more biodiversity drops in the Phanerozoic eon, evident in the geological record, might have been caused by the most powerful kind of stellar explosion so far known (Gamma Ray Bursts) has…
The thermodynamic dissipation theory for the origin of life asserts a thermodynamic imperative for the origin of life, suggesting that the fundamental molecules of life originated as self-organized molecular photon dissipative structures…
Chemical and morphological features of spores and pollens have been linked to changes in solar ultraviolet radiation (specifically UVB, 280-315 nm) at Earth's surface. Variation in UVB exposure as inferred from these features has been…
We describe the photochemical dissipative structuring of fatty acids from CO and CO2 saturated water under the solar UVC and UVA photon potential prevalent at Earth's surface during the Archean. Their association into vesicles and their…
Solar X-ray and UV radiation (0.1-320 nm) received at Earth's surface is an important aspect of the circumstances under which life formed on Earth. The quantity that is received depends on two main variables: the emission of radiation by…
Mid-infrared spectroscopy is one of the few ways to observe the composition of the terrestial planet forming zone, the inner few au, of proto-planetary disks. The species currently detected in the disk atmosphere, for example CO, CO2, H2O…