Related papers: Molecular Cloud Biology
In order to understand the origin of observed molecular cloud properties, it is critical to understand how clouds interact with their environments during their formation, growth, and collapse. It has been suggested that accretion-driven…
Topology transcends boundaries that conventionally delineate physical, biological and engineering sciences. Our ability to mathematically describe topology, combined with our access to precision tracking and manipulation approaches, has…
The search for biosignatures on exoplanets connects the fields of biology and biochemistry to astronomical observation, with the hope that we might detect evidence of active biological processes on worlds outside the solar system. Here we…
The potential detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus has reignited interest in the possibility of life aloft in this environment. If the cloud decks of Venus are indeed an abode of life, it should reside in the "habitable zone"…
Life as we know it requires the presence of liquid water and the availability of nutrients, which are mainly based on the elements C, H, N, O, P, and S (CHNOPS) and trace metal micronutrients. We aim to understand the presence of these…
Supersonic turbulence in molecular clouds is a dominant agent that strongly affects the clouds' evolution and star formation activity. Turbulence may be initiated and maintained by a number of processes, acting at a wide range of physical…
Thousands of exoplanets orbit nearby stars, showcasing a remarkable diversity in mass, size, and orbits. With the James Webb Space Telescope now operational, we are observing exoplanet atmospheres and aiming to reach down to small,…
The term Biosphere Substrate is introduced for celestial bodies, like terrestrial planets or big gas giant moons, suitable to sustain full-scale open biosphere after Terraforming. The purpose of the work is to examine the range of…
Biosignature gas detection is one of the ultimate future goals for exoplanet atmosphere studies. We have created a framework for linking biosignature gas detectability to biomass estimates, including atmospheric photochemistry and…
Clouds and hazes are commonplace in the atmospheres of solar system planets and are likely ubiquitous in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets as well. Clouds affect every aspect of a planetary atmosphere, from the transport of radiation,…
The formation of massive stellar clusters in turbulent molecular clouds is investigated. We include artificial star formation and energy feedback of newly born stars. The obtained systems are not likely to survive. Case studies to determine…
Cloud microphysical parameterizations in atmospheric models describe the formation and evolution of clouds and precipitation, a central weather and climate process. Cloud-associated latent heating is a primary driver of large and…
Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and their stellar offspring are the building blocks of galaxies. The physical characteristics of GMCs and their evolution are tightly connected to galaxy evolution. The macroscopic properties of 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…
Life in the clouds of Venus, if present in sufficiently high abundance, must be affecting the atmospheric chemistry. It has been proposed that abundant Venusian life could obtain energy from its environment using three possible sulfur…
Molecular chirality is critical to biochemical function, but it is unknown when chiral selectivity first became important in the evolutionary transition from geochemistry to biochemistry during the emergence of life. Here, we identify key…
Structural biology aims at characterizing the structural and dynamic properties of biological macromolecules at atomic details. Gaining insight into three dimensional structures of biomolecules and their interactions is critical for…
We use the critical step model to study the major transitions in evolution on Earth. We find that a total of five steps represents the most plausible estimate, in agreement with previous studies, and use the fossil record to identify the…
Molecular hydrogen has an important role in the early stages of star formation as well as in the production of many other molecules that have been detected in the interstellar medium. In this review we show that it is now possible to study…
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…