THE SURVIVAL OF COMPLEX PREBIOTIC INTERSTELLAR MOLECULES

摘要

We investigate the possibility for organic matter to survive in space and seed planetary systems with the prebiotic molecules needed for the emergency of life on the Earth. In dense molecular clouds the coagulation process produces aggregates with a large number of internal cavities coated by molecular ice, that appear to be more promising chemical factories than external grain surfaces. The chemistry within aggregated grains offers a completely new perspective and it is likely to yield a much wider range of chemical species with respect to the more common gas-phase and/or surface reactions in the interstellar medium. Since the molecular ices are chemically processed by ultraviolet radiation, a detailed investigation of the penetration of UV radiation within dust aggregates is a prerequisite. In the following we present some results of our study.