Astrochemical Processes

The record of the early Solar System's chemistry preserved in comets and meteorites — the amino acids in the Murchison meteorite, the ancient inclusions of Allende, and the ices of comets — a frozen archive of the material that built the planets.

Chemistry that happens in the gas between grains, driven especially by fast ion–molecule reactions that proceed even at the frigid temperatures of interstellar clouds. It builds many of the simple molecules seen in space.

Chemistry that happens on the icy mantles of dust grains, where atoms and molecules land, wander, and meet. It makes molecules the gas phase cannot — water and methanol among them — and is the source of much of space's complex organic chemistry.

Chemistry driven by ultraviolet starlight, which breaks molecules apart and ionises atoms at the illuminated edges of clouds and the surfaces of disks — both destroying molecules and opening new reaction pathways.

The chemistry of protoplanetary disks that decides what new planets are made of — where ices freeze out, which molecules end up in comets and which in planetary atmospheres, and how much water and organic material a world inherits.

The astrochemistry of molecules relevant to the origin of life — how the building blocks of biology can be assembled in interstellar clouds, on icy grains, and in the young Solar System, and delivered to a planet's surface.

Chemistry triggered when gas is suddenly heated and compressed — by the outflows of newborn stars or the blast waves of supernovae. Shocks sputter material off dust grains and power reactions that need high temperatures, changing a cloud's chemistry.