This week in Nature it was announced that complex organic molecules were observed in a young planetary system.
It Came From Outer Space
The Murchison meteorite contains the building blocks of life, and they formed in outer space.
Ancient Seas
Earth’s water is more ancient than you might suspect.
Chemodynamics
Much of the modeling of astrophysical systems focuses on dynamical behavior. That is, how stars, planets and interstellar clouds move under the forces of gravity. While such dynamical modelling can prove useful for studying the motion of galaxies, they are not quite as good at modeling the evolution of galaxies. That’s because galaxies evolve over time not only due to the motion of stars within them, but they also evolve chemically as old stars die and new stars form. The chemical makeup of new stars depends where and when they form.
Purcell Rockets
The chemical interaction between the gas and dust in interstellar space can be quite complex. Given the low temperature and pressure of space, one might think that chemical reactions are simple and rare, but as I’ve written about before, the surface of dust grains can act as a kind of catalytic converter that allows complex chemistry to occur.
Catalytic Converter
One of the exciting aspects of astrophysics (and any area of science really) is how odd discoveries lead to new understanding. As a case in point, consider our understanding of the gas and dust in our galaxy. Gas and dust is often seen as an annoyance because it gets in our way. Observational astronomy would be much easier if it weren’t for all the gas and dust. Sure, gas clouds will sometimes collapse to form new stars, but beyond that it surely wasn’t doing anything interesting.
Twilight Sparkle
If you live in the United States, you will likely take in an evening of fireworks. While you are enjoying them safely, you’ll notice that fireworks come in a variety of colors. The different colors are due to various metallic salts that are used in the fireworks. For example, reds can be created with strontium or lithium salts, orange with calcium, green with barium, blue with copper, and so on. A wide variety of colors can be produced by mixing these compounds as well.
Stars Like Dust
When Carl Sagan said we are all stardust, that knowledge was derived from a long sequence of observations and applied physics. We can see the composition of stars by their starlight. We know that fusion occurs in their cores, and we know that the atoms in our body largely come from stars.
Life Finds a Way
Yesterday I mentioned how cutting edge research can sometimes lead to false positives. Sometimes what looks like a result turns out not to be. This is part of the reason we have peer review, and why we keep testing new results. Another way to eliminate false positives is to try to discover how your experiment could be fooled. If you are looking for a result, what else could produce a similar result? This is the goal of a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which outlines how evidence of life on an exoplanet could be a false positive.