Astrochemistry: August 2019


The answer to "How did the first organisms on Earth incorporate the critical element phosphorus?" has been a quandary for researchers, but, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa physical chemists believe a meteoric visitor could be the critical link.

The work is devoted to the adaptation of the results of laboratory studies of the laser-induced dissociation of molecules of benzene adsorbed on a quartz substrate to the conditions of the interstellar medium.

Comets contain abundant amounts of organic and inorganic species. Many of the volatile molecules in comets have also been observed in the interstellar medium and some of them even with similar relative abundances, indicating formation under similar conditions or even sharing a common chemical pathway.