Our astrochemical heritage

By P. Caselli, Cecilia Ceccarelli. 2012

342 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Our Sun and planetary system were born about 4.5 billion years ago. How did this happen, and what is the nature of our heritage from these early times? This review tries to address these questions from an astrochemical point of view. On the one hand, we have some crucial information from meteorites, comets and other small bodies of the Solar System. On the other hand, we have the results of studies on the formation process of Sun-like stars in our Galaxy. These results tell us that Sun-like stars form in dense regions of molecular clouds and that three major steps are involved before the planet-formation period. They are represented by the prestellar core, protostellar envelope and protoplanetary disk phases. Simultaneously with the evolution from one phase to the other, the chemical composition gains increasing complexity.In this review, we first present the information on the chemical composition of meteorites, comets and other small bodies of the Solar System, which is potentially linked to the first phases of the Solar System’s formation. Then we describe the observed chemical composition in the prestellar core, protostellar envelope and protoplanetary-disk phases, including the processes that lead to them. Finally, we draw together pieces from the different objects and phases to understand whether and how much we inherited chemically from the time of the Sun’s birth.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/780682d7069ccdcb34caea522c5949337499fe27

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Cecilia Ceccarelli
2. E. Bergin
3. K. Oberg
4. V. Taquet
5. N. Balucani
6. Bertrand Lefloch
7. A. Bosman
8. R. Bachiller

In Spectroscopy

1. Cecilia Ceccarelli
2. K. Oberg
3. E. Bergin
4. A. Bosman
5. E. F. Dishoeck
6. A. Heays
7. Bertrand Lefloch
8. V. Taquet

Citations in the corpus

• Photodissociation and photoionisation of atoms and molecules of astrophysical interest (2017, background): “…water to form HDO introduces the possibility of preferential branching to form OH or OD photodissociation fragments and imposing a significant influence on the ratios of H2O, HDO, and D2O found in interstellar space, comets, and terrestrially (Caselli & Ceccarelli 2012; van Dishoeck et al. 2013).”
• THE ORIGIN OF COMPLEX ORGANIC MOLECULES IN PRESTELLAR CORES (2014, background): “…COMs are of particular interest for their potential relation with the origin of the terrestrial life and, more prosaically, because they are a powerful diagnostic to understand the matter chemical evolution during the formation of planetary systems like our own (Caselli & Ceccarelli 2012).”
• Formation of complex organic molecules in cold objects: the role of gas-phase reactions (2015, background): “In conclusion, grain surface chemistry certainly plays a role, for example in forming hydrogenated species during the prestellar phase (Tielens & Hagens 1980; Caselli & Ceccarelli 2012), but not necessarily in the formation of all COMs.”
• Astrochemistry and compositions of planetary systems (2020, background): “Based on observations and theory, different ice components form at different times, and therefore at different cloud temperatures and densities, which should result in different levels of deuterium fractionation (Caselli and Ceccarelli 2012).”