From Astrochemistry to Astrobiology: Organic Molecules in a Planet- forming Disk

Details From Astrochemistry to Astrobiology: Organic Molecules in a Planet- forming Disk From Astrochemistry to Astrobiology: Organic Molecules in a Planet- forming Disk

Aug 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007noao.prop..224n&link_type=abstract

NOAO Proposal ID #2007B-0224

Mathematics

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Scientific paper

The difficulty of synthesizing complex biological compounds in the environment of the young Earth has led to serious consideration of the possibility that prebiotic molecules were delivered to Earth by asteroids, comets, and meteorites. Were biogenic molecules (or their molecular precursors) in fact present in the asteroids and/or comets that impacted the young Earth and in what abundance? Studies of the chemistry and molecular abundances of present-day planet-forming disks offer the opportunity to address this important question. With the advent of TEXES on Gemini, it is now possible to take steps in this direction. We therefore propose to continue our study with TEXES of the physical properties (temperature, density) and molecular content of the disk surrounding the young star GV Tau. GV Tau is an edge-on system with an unusually large column density of absorbing disk gas along the line-of-sight. By building on our results from 2006B, the proposed observations will (1) probe the chemical pathways by which disks can synthesize complex molecules of biological interest; (2) probe the importance of dynamical processes such as radial mixing for disk chemistry; and (3) quantify the abundances of important prebiotic species.

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