Water interstellar

Hydrodynamic marked the beginning of fluid dynamics—the study of the way fluids and gases behave. Each particle in a gas obeys Isaac Newton s laws of motion, but instead of simple planetary motion, a much richer variety of behavior can be observed. In the third century B.C.E., Archimedes of Syracuse studied fluids at rest, hydrostatics, but it was nearly 2,000 years before Daniel Bernoulli took the next step. Using calculus, he combined Archimedes idea of pressure with Newton s laws of motion. Fluid dynamics is a vast area of study that can be used to describe many phenomena, from the study of simple fluids such as water, to the behavior of the plasma in the interior of stars, and even interstellar gases. 

The darkness associated with dense interstellar clouds is caused by dust particles of size =0.1 microns, which are a common ingredient in interstellar and circum-stellar space, taking up perhaps 1% of the mass of interstellar clouds with a fractional number density of 10-12. These particles both scatter and absorb external visible and ultraviolet radiation from stars, protecting molecules in dense clouds from direct photodissociation via external starlight. They are rather less protective in the infrared, and are quite transparent in the microwave.6 The chemical nature of the dust particles is not easy to ascertain compared with the chemical nature of the interstellar gas broad spectral features in the infrared have been interpreted in terms of core-mantle particles, with the cores consisting of two populations, one of silicates and one of carbonaceous, possibly graphitic material. The mantles, which appear to be restricted to dense clouds, are probably a mixture of ices such as water, carbon monoxide, and methanol.7... 

The above examples should suffice to show how ion-molecule, dissociative recombination, and neutral-neutral reactions combine to form a variety of small species. Once neutral species are produced, they are destroyed by ion-molecule and neutral-neutral reactions. Stable species such as water and ammonia are depleted only via ion-molecule reactions. The dominant reactive ions in model calculations are the species HCO+, H3, H30+, He+, C+, and H+ many of then-reactions have been studied in the laboratory.41 Radicals such as OH can also be depleted via neutral-neutral reactions with atoms (see reactions 13, 15, 16) and, according to recent measurements, by selected reactions with stable species as well.18 Another loss mechanism in interstellar clouds is adsorption onto dust particles. Still another is photodestruction caused by ultraviolet photons produced when secondary electrons from cosmic ray-induced ionization excite H2, which subsequently fluoresces.42... 

The interstellar dust was shown to contain quinone derivatives as well as oxygen-rich condensed aromatic compounds the quinones were present in both hydrated and carboxylated form. Very little nitrogen was present in the compounds detected. The cometary material, however, contained condensed nitrogen heterocycles. Hardly any oxygen was detected in the solid phase of the cometary dust it possibly evaporates from the tail of the comet in the form of water or oxidized carbon compounds. The authors assume that these analytical results could lead to a reconsideration of the current biogenesis models (Kissel et al 2004 Brownlee, 2004). 

Fig. 3.12 Model of an agglomerate consisting of many small interstellar dust particles. Each of the rod-shaped particles consists of a silicate nucleus surrounded by yellowish organic material. A further coating consists of ice formed from condensed gases, such as water, ammonia, methanol, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Photograph Gisela Kruger, University of Bremen...

However, one of the electrical engineers at the University of California, Jack Welch, was willing to work with me, and I could use his radio antenna. So I had a student, Albert Cheung, take a look, and he looked at these dark clouds in space, and sure enough, there was ammonia. Well, since we found ammonia, we thought, we ought to look for water too, just to try this out. So the student looked, and there was water radiation. In fact it was very intense - hey, it had to be a maser, maser amplification in interstellar space And OH had already seemed to indicate something similar. 

Now today, we have found about a hundred different masers in space and some lasers. The difference between a maser and a laser is of course only in the wavelength. But there are some astronomical systems where infrared is getting amplified. Now as has been pointed out, amplification in interstellar space doesn t involve resonances, but it does involve stimulated emission. You know, somebody could have seen these interstellar masers in the radio regions of the spectrum many years ago. Anybody who used the radio technology of 1936, and looked up into the sky, could have detected this water frequency. They didn t bother to look, but it was there all the time. So now we know, lasers have been there for billions of years. Masers have been there billions of years. So that s another way we might have discovered them, but we didn t. Now I emphasize this to indicate that we need to search, we mustn t be too confined by what we think is going to work, we ve got to explore. 

Maser transitions have been observed in many important molecules and have been used to carry out surveys of the entire sky. The 22.235 GHz water maser transition is the strongest transition in the radio universe and represents an interesting candidate for an interstellar broadcast frequency. If extraterrestrial intelligence is trying to communicate with us, the choice of the broadcast frequency is an important one and would be known to all intelligent life. Of course it would have a different label, 22.235 GHz being a distinctly Earthly label, but it is a fundamental transition frequency and is observed everywhere. Other maser transitions include the 6.7 and 12.2 GHz methanol maser, the SiO maser v = 1, J = 7-6, 301.8 GHz, which occurs between levels in the first vibration state of the SiO molecule, and finally the OH maser first discovered in 1963 and buried deep in the 2n3/2 electronic state of the hydroxyl radical near 18 cm. This is actually four transitions at 1612, 1665, 1667 and 1720 MHz, all of which must be seen as a group but not necessarily of the same intensity. 

Dust Micron-sized particles of silicate in the interstellar medium responsible for short-wavelength scatter - dust particles become covered with water-ice mantels. 

Interstellar ice The formation of ice layers or mantles on the surface of interstellar dust grains formed by the adsorption of O and H separately, forming water ice on the surface. 

Two mechanisms have been proposed to account for the deuterium enrichment (1) for organic molecules, high D/H ratios can be explained by ion molecule reactions that occur in interstellar space and (2) for the phyllosilicates the enrichment can be produced via isotope exchange between water and hydrogen (Robert et al. 2000). 

Neutral hydrogen in the magnetic fields in interstellar space may have excited state life times that is measured in years—in contrast hydrogen in liquid water at room temperature display excited state lifetimes of 3 seconds. Why is this How come that the liquid water can lead to a more efficient relaxation of the proton... 

It might seem at first glance that arriving at the dipole moment p of an ellipsoidal particle via the asymptotic form of the potential < p is a needlessly complicated procedure and that p is simply t>P, where v is the particle volume. However, this correspondence breaks down for a void, in which P, = 0, but which nonetheless has a nonzero dipole moment. Because the medium is, in general, polarizable, uP, is not equal to p even for a material particle except when it is in free space. In many applications of light scattering and absorption by small particles—in planetary atmospheres and interstellar space, for example—this condition is indeed satisfied. Laboratory experiments, however, are frequently carried out with particles suspended in some kind of medium such as water. It is for this reason that we have taken some care to ensure that the expressions for the polarizability of an ellipsoidal particle are completely general. 

Interstellar grains with ice mantles probably comprised a significant amount of the material that collapsed to form the solar nebula. Heating of this material caused the icy mantles to sublimate, producing a vapor that subsequently condensed as crystalline ices as the nebula cooled. By mass, H20 ice rivals rock in terms of potentially condensable matter from a gas of cosmic composition. The amount of water ice depends, of course, on the extent to which oxygen is otherwise tied up with carbon as CO and/or C02 (Prinn,... 

Ices formed as mantles on silicate grains in interstellar space, trapping noble gases and providing sites for the synthesis of organic compounds. As the solar system formed, these ices were vaporized, particularly in the warmer regions near the Sun. Water ice recondensed outside the snowline and combined with rocky material and surviving interstellar material to form planetesimals. 

Fig. 4.2. The Miller-Urey apparatus for abiotic synthesis of biochemicals from primordial gases is shown. Before each experiment the system was thoroughly evacuated, flushed with interstellar-type gases, and sealed. Water is brought to a boil and vapors rise through an electric discharge chamber and are re-condensed and led back into the boiling water reservoir. It took only a few weeks to produce a color change in the water which indicated an accumulation of organic compounds shown in Table 4.1. On the young earth, of course, this experiment would have been carried on for a few million years.

Harteck did important work in quantum-and radiochemistry and also played a leading role in Germany s atomic energy program during World War II. See P. F. Dahl, Heavy Water and the Wartime Race for Nuclear Energy (Bristol, 1999). After the war, when Harteck settled in the United States, he focused on atmospheric and interstellar chemistry. See A. Farkas, Paul Harteck The triumphant decade 1925-1934, Am-bix 36 (1989) 91-102. 

Both pathways probably involved quite different conditions, the main difference being the absence of liquid water in the interstellar medium. Nevertheless the basic building blocks and chemical reactions should have been roughly similar, thus leading to important connections between these two routes. While a wide variety of amino acids are prebiotically relevant (as attested by either Urey-Miller experiments or meteorite analysis), we shall focus in this section on a-amino acids (as the most relevant to biochemistry) and closely related compounds. 

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