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Search for water and life's building blocks in the universe: A summary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2016

Edwin A. Bergin
Edwin A. Bergin*
Affiliation:
Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 1085 S. University Ave., Ann Arbor MI, 48109, USA email: ebergin@umich.edu
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Abstract

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Water and organics need to be supplied to terrestrial worlds like our own to provide the essential compounds required for the origin of life. These molecules form initially during the earliest stages of stellar birth, are supplied by collapse to the planet-forming disk predominantly as ice, and may undergo significant processing during this collapse and within large planetesimals that are heated via radioactive decay. Water and organic carriers can be quite volatile, thus their survival as ices within rocks is not preordained. In this focus meeting our goal is to bring together astronomers, cosmochemists, planetary scientists, chemical physicists, and spectroscopists who each explore individual aspects of this problem. In this summary we discuss some of the main themes that appeared in the meeting. Ultimately, cross-field collaboration is needed to provide greater understanding of the likelihood that terrestrial worlds form with these key compounds readily available on their surfaces – and are hence habitable if present at the right distance from the star.

Keywords

WaterOrganicsSolar SystemExoplanetsEarth
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 11 , General Assembly A29B: Astronomy in Focus , August 2015 , pp. 436 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2016 

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