Related papers: Possible Ribose Synthesis in Carbonaceous Planetes…
We outline a scenario which traces a direct path from freely-floating nebula particles to the first 10-100km-sized bodies in the terrestrial planet region, producing planetesimals which have properties matching those of primitive meteorite…
The oldest forms of living organisms on Earth are about 3.5 billion years old, and they are found in hydrothermal deposits, and it is often hypothesized that life originated there. But the hydrothermal systems with a fairly strong flow of…
The delivery of water to the inner Solar System rocky planets, including Earth, remains debated, as standard models assume that they formed from dry grains, inside the snowline of the protosolar nebula. However, a recent work showed that a…
The most abundant components of primitive meteorites (chondrites) are millimeter-sized glassy spherical chondrules formed by transient melting events in the solar protoplanetary disk. Using Pb-Pb dates of 22 individual chondrules, we show…
Primordial (or Pop III) supernovae were the first nucleosynthetic engines in the Universe, forging the heavy elements required for the later formation of planets and life. Water, in particular, is thought to be crucial to the cosmic origins…
Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus and Sulfur (CHNOPS) play key roles in the origin and proliferation of life on Earth. Given the universality of physics and chemistry, not least the ubiquity of water as a solvent and carbon as…
The water content and habitability of terrestrial planets are determined during their final assembly, from perhaps a hundred 1000-km "planetary embryos" and a swarm of billions of 1-10 km "planetesimals." During this process, we assume that…
Recent observations from NASA's Kepler mission detected the first planets in circumbinary orbits. The question we try to answer is where these planets formed in the circumbinary disk and how far inside they migrated to reach their present…
We propose that chondrules are formed by radiative heating of pre-existing dust clumps during close fly-bys of planetesimals with incandescent lava at their surfaces. We show that the required temperatures and cooling rates are easily…
Current theories suggest that on Earth and, possibly, on other terrestrial planets early in their history, the first continental crust may has been produced by direct melting of hydrated peridotite. However, the conditions, mechanisms and…
As some of the most ancient materials in our Solar System, chondritic meteorites offer a valuable window into the early stages of planetary formation, particularly the accretion processes that built the most primitive asteroids. Until now,…
The class of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites are examples of material from the solar system which have been relatively unchanged from the time of their initial formation. These meteorites have been classified according to the…
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…
In this chapter we review the astrophysical origins of Earth's carbon, starting from the products of the Big Bang and culminating with the Earth's formation. We review the measured compositions of different primitive objects including…
Several lines of evidence indicate a non-chondritic composition for Bulk Earth. If Earth formed from the accretion of chondritic material, its non-chondritic composition, in particular the super-chondritic 142Nd/144Nd and low Mg/Fe ratios,…
The Al/Si and Mg/Si ratios in non-carbonaceous chondrites are lower than the solar (i.e., CI-chondritic) values, in sharp contrast to the non-CI carbonaceous meteorites and the Earth, which are enriched in refractory elements and have Mg/Si…
Context: Modern versions of the Miller-Urey experiment claim that formamide (NH$_2$CHO) could be the starting point for the formation of metabolic and genetic macromolecules. Intriguingly, formamide is indeed observed in regions forming…
It is shown that several habitability conditions (in fact, at least seven such conditions) appear to be fulfilled automatically by circumbinary planets of main-sequence stars (CBP-MS), whereas on Earth these conditions are fulfilled only by…
How simple organic matter appeared on Earth and the processes by which it transformed into more evolved organic compounds, which ultimately led to the emergence of life, is still an open topic. Different scenarios have been proposed, the…
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…