Complex Astrochemistry on Thin Ice Covering Dust Grains
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | 2020 Jun 05
Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and the University of Jena have obtained a clearer view of nature's tiny deep-space laboratories: tiny dust grains covered with ice. Instead of regular shapes covered thickly in ice, such grains appear to be fluffy networks of dust, with thin ice layers. In particular, that means the dust grains have considerably larger surfaces, which is where most of the chemical reactions take place. Hence, the new structure has fundamental consequences for astronomers' view of organic chemistry in space – and thus for the genesis of prebiotic molecules that could have played an important role for the origin of life on Earth.
Creating complex molecules in deep space is anything but easy. To the best of current knowledge, the natural laboratories in which the necessary reactions take place are interstellar dust grains with icy surfaces. Now, new experimental results by Alexey Potapov of the MPIA laboratory astrophysics group at Jena University and his colleagues demonstrate that, under realistic conditions, the ice layers may well be so thin that the surface structure of the dust grains themselves plays an important role.
This opens up a new field of study: Those who are interested in the cosmic origins of the organic precursor molecules of life will need to take a closer look at the different properties of the surfaces of cosmic dust grains, their interactions with small amounts of ice, and at the role the resulting complex environments play in helping to synthesize complex organic molecules. ...
Ice Coverage of Dust Grains in Cold Astrophysical Environments ~ Alexey Potapov et al
- Physical Review Letters 124(22):1103 (05 Jun 2020) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.221103
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:2005.00757 > 02 May 2020 (v1), 11 May 2020 (v2)