Related papers: We Drink Good 4.5-Billion-Year-Old Water
Most models of volatile delivery to accreting terrestrial planets assume that the carriers for water are similar in water content to the carbonaceous chondrites in our Solar System. Here we suggest that the water content of primitive bodies…
Context. The synthesis of water is one necessary step in the origin and development of life. It is believed that pristine water is formed and grows on the surface of icy dust grains in dark interstellar clouds. Until now, there has been no…
Element synthesis which started with p-p chain has resulted in several specific characteristics including lack of any stable isotope having atomic masses 5 or 8. The carbon to oxygen ratio is fixed early by the chain of coincidences. These,…
Water is abundantly present in the Universe. It is the main component of interstellar ice mantles and a key ingredient for life. Water in space is mainly formed through surface reactions. Three formation routes have been proposed in the…
Planetary systems, ours included, are formed in disks of dust and gas around young stars. Disks are an integral part of the star and planet formation process, and knowledge of the distribution and temperature of inner disk material is…
Star forming galaxies represent a valuable tracer of cosmic history. Recent observational progress with Hubble Space Telescope has led to the discovery and study of the earliest-known galaxies corresponding to a period when the Universe was…
Super-Earths orbiting M-dwarf stars may be the most common habitable planets in the Universe. However, their habitability is threatened by intense irradiation from their host stars, which drives the escape of water to space and can lead to…
Carbon is an essential element for life but its behavior during Earth's accretion is not well understood. Carbonaceous grains in meteoritic and cometary materials suggest that irreversible sublimation, and not condensation, governs carbon…
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…
Infrared studies have revealed debris likely related to planet formation in orbit around ~30% of youthful, intermediate mass, main sequence stars. We present evidence, based on atmospheric pollution by various elements heavier than helium,…
We review the problem of the formation of terrestrial planets, with particular emphasis on the interaction of dynamical and geochemical models. The lifetime of gas around stars in the process of formation is limited to a few million years…
The habitable zone is the circumstellar region in which a terrestrial-mass planet with an atmosphere can sustain liquid water on its surface. However, despite the usefulness of this concept, it is being found to be increasingly limiting in…
The early start to life naively suggests that abiogenesis is a rapid process on Earth-like planets. However, if evolution typically takes ~4Gyr to produce intelligent life-forms like us, then the limited lifespan of Earth's biosphere…
It is not currently possible to create a living organism ab initio due to the overwhelming complexity of biological systems. In fact, the origin of life mechanism, this being how biological organisms form from non-living matter, is unknown.…
The climate of early Mars remains a topic of intense debate. Ancient terrains preserve landscapes consistent with stream channels, lake basins, and possibly even oceans, and thus the presence of liquid water flowing on the Martian surface 4…
The final stage in the formation of terrestrial planets consists of the accumulation of ~1000-km ``planetary embryos'' and a swarm of billions of 1-10 km ``planetesimals.'' During this process, water-rich material is accreted by the…
Water is necessary both for the evolution of life and its continuance. It possesses particular properties that cannot be found in other materials and that are required for life-giving processes. These properties are brought about by the…
The past century of interstellar dust has brought us from first ignoring it to finding that it plays an important role in the evolution of galaxies. Current observational results in our galaxy provide a complex physical and chemical…
Terrestrial exoplanets in the canonical habitable zone may have a variety of initial water fractions due to random volatile delivery by planetesimals. If the total planetary water complement is high, the entire surface may be covered in…
Surface liquid water is essential for standard planetary habitability. Calculations of atmospheric circulation on tidally locked planets around M stars suggest that this peculiar orbital configuration lends itself to the trapping of large…