Journal ArticleDOI
Comet Halley as an aggregate of interstellar dust and further evidence for the photochemical formation of organics in the interstellar medium
R. Briggs,Gözen Ertem,James P. Ferris,J. M. Greenberg,P. J. McCain,C. X. Mendoza-Gomez,W. A. Schutte,W. A. Schutte +7 more
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TLDR
Analysis of mixtures of CO:NH3:H2O at 12 K results in the formation of an organic residue which is not volatile in high vacuum at room temperature and the detection of C2–C3 hydroxy acids and hydroxy amides, glycerol, urea, glycine, hexamethylene tetramine, formamidine and ethanolamine.Abstract:
Photolysis of mixtures of CO:NH3:H2O at 12 K results in the formation of an organic residue which is not volatile in high vacuum at room temperature. Analysis of this fraction by GC-MS resulted in the detection of C2-C3 hydroxy acids and hydroxy amides, glycerol, urea, glycine, hexamethylene tetramine, formamidine and ethanolamine. Use of isotopically labeled gases made it possible to establish that the observed products were not contaminants. The reaction pathways for the formation of these products were determined from the position of the isotopic labels in the mass spectral fragments. The significance of these findings to the composition of comets and the origins of life is discussed.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Organic Molecules in the Interstellar Medium, Comets, and Meteorites: A Voyage from Dark Clouds to the Early Earth
TL;DR: Our understanding of the evolution of organic molecules and their voyage from molecular clouds to the early solar system and Earth has changed dramatically as discussed by the authors, and our understanding of molecular evolution has been changed dramatically.
Journal ArticleDOI
Amino acids from ultraviolet irradiation of interstellar ice analogues.
G. M. Muñoz Caro,Uwe J. Meierhenrich,W. A. Schutte,Bernard Barbier,A. Arcones Segovia,H. Rosenbauer,Wolfram Thiemann,A. Brack,J.M. Greenberg +8 more
TL;DR: The results demonstrate that the spontaneous generation of amino acids in the interstellar medium is possible, supporting the suggestion that prebiotic molecules could have been delivered to the early Earth by cometary dust, meteorites or interplanetary dust particles.
Journal ArticleDOI
Chemical evolution of star-forming regions
TL;DR: In this paper, the chemical processes that occur during all stages of the formation of stars, from the collapse of molecular clouds to the assemblage of icy planetesimals in protoplanetary accretion disks, are reviewed.
Journal ArticleDOI
What makes a planet habitable
Helmut Lammer,Jan Hendrik Bredehöft,Athena Coustenis,Maxim L. Khodachenko,Lisa Kaltenegger,Olivier Grasset,Daniel Prieur,François Raulin,Pascale Ehrenfreund,M. Yamauchi,Jan-Erik Wahlund,Jean-Mathias Grießmeier,Günter Stangl,Charles S. Cockell,Yu. N. Kulikov,John Lee Grenfell,Heike Rauer +16 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the geodynamical and geophysical environments which are necessary for planets where plate tectonics remain active over geological time scales and for planets which evolve to one-plate planets.
Book ChapterDOI
Organic matter in meteorites: molecular and isotopic analyses of the Murchison meteorite.
John R. Cronin,Sherwood Chang +1 more
TL;DR: The organic chemistry of carbonaceous chondrites is consistent with a formation scheme in which a parent body was formed from volatile-rich icy planetesimals containing interstellar organic matter, and warming of the parent body led to an extensive aqueous phase in which the interstellar organics underwent various reactions, and residual volatiles were largely lost leaving behind the suite of nonvolatile compounds that now characterize these meteorites as discussed by the authors.
References
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Book
The chemistry of heterocyclic compounds
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that one of the most common types of known quantities of phenyl phenyl is phenyl oxide (POP) oxide, which is a phenyl-oxyoxy phenyl (PE)-oxyoxyphenyl) that can be obtained from phenyl compounds.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cometary delivery of organic molecules to the early Earth.
TL;DR: A comprehensive treatment of comet-asteroid interaction with the atmosphere, surface impact, and resulting organic pyrolysis demonstrates that organics will not survive impacts at velocities greater than about 10 kilometers per second and that even comets and asteroids as small as 100 meters in radius cannot be aerobraked to below this velocity in 1-bar atmospheres.
Journal ArticleDOI
The organic component in dust from comet Halley as measured by the PUMA mass spectrometer on board Vega 1
Jochen Kissel,F. R. Krueger +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the composition of cometary dust has been analyzed by mass spectroscopy, showing that most particles consist of a predominantly chondritic core with an organic mantle composed mainly of highly unsaturated compounds.
Journal ArticleDOI
Aspects of the major element composition of Halley's dust
TL;DR: The chemical composition of the solid grains from comet Halley can be inferred from impact-ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry Halley's dust in the vicinity of the VEGA-1 spacecraft is a mixture of a refractory organic component and unequilibrated silicates, but detailed chemical information on individual particles is difficult to extract because of the complexity of the impact ionization process.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mars and Earth: Origin and Abundance of Volatiles
Edward Anders,Tobias Owen +1 more
TL;DR: The perspective gained through the present investigation suggests that this is not a necessary condition for planets at the distance of Mars from a solar-type central star, and if it turns out that Mars is completely devoid of life, this does not mean that the zones around stars in which habitable planets can exist are much narrower than has been thought.
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The organic component in dust from comet Halley as measured by the PUMA mass spectrometer on board Vega 1
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