Astrochemistry & the Search for Life: From Early Earth to Exoplanets

[00:00:01][Music] self introduction I am a radio Sonoma especially in the millimeter and sub mimet wave regions uh as I will show later I used the several radio telescopes um I that I usually used the noyama you know uh large uh millim Wave radio telescope in Japan noyama 45 M the telescope and uh uh we uh observed uh a variety of molecular lines uh and uh especially we succeeded to hunt you know discover uh let's see how many uh we we discover 17 17 new industrial molecules and so of course we try to find new ones and uh we try to uh understand uh the abundances and how explain how how much they they uh they exist regarding the formation so I'm currently uh uh the uh vice president of commission F do3 astrobiology of the international astronomical Union I uh I was appointed last year and the vice president uh last for three years so after that I don't know what happens to me well if nothing I I if I do anything wrong then I will be promoted to be to be the president um uh as Miguel mentioned at the uh opening uh message uh we are now uh uh preparing an astrobiology conference conference in Chile uh next year almost one year from now so uh last month I visited Chile to venue and uh we investigated the uh suitability of the site and we met in local people and some something something so uh I am traveling around the world and uh this uh this is my first visit to Vietnam uh but uh you know this is my fifth talk in Vietnam fifth five fifth talk uh I I have a friend in Vietnam he he's a Vietnamese working in in Korea and Japan so he asked me to to visit Hanoi so I was I visited the Vietnamese Science and Technology Academy so I gave a talk there and uh next day I moved to a small City bu uh where one University exists and I gave a seminar know the second one and tomor yesterday morning I gave two lecture talks therefore this is my fifth talk let us start uh first of all uh I have to provide uh um the definition of uh as chemistry uh there should be various way to define know what astrochemistry is uh the one way is to uh describe like this uh astrochemistry is the study of abundances how much they exist of chemical elements in the in those cases primarily Atomic and molecular form and uh uh uh elements and molecules in the universe and their interaction with radiation because know they uh emit or absorb uh electromagnetic uh signals the that's why we are able to uh observe them so um so astrochemistry as you can easily imagine uh this is a discipline of an overlap uh between astronomy and chemistry so uh as far as I know you know astr chemists are a minor component of uh astronomers because many of astronomers uh not do not have much knowledge on the chemistry so I I I'm not saying I have full of knowledge on chemistry I I know just a bit but uh I have more knowledge than normal astronomers so um uh this is the outline of my uh talk for today uh I will uh describe in briefly what the inter matter is and then I will show molecules in space uh application spectroscopy and how they are formed and uh how we derive you know physical parameters how uh we can derive um uh number of uh species in a specific source and how the you know intensity distribution can be described and uh we will discuss um how you know molecules are formed formation mechanism to form something wrong some funny English but don't care and finally if I have sufficient time I'd like to touch a bit uh the relation of as chemistry and biology so inter so uh Nikos already uh showed some some beautiful slides so I think you have you are already familiar with inata um I think uh many many of you have seen this object what this playus yes so playus is a very beautiful uh soci object because you know stars are so blue and uh we can see a very beautiful white Veil around them these you know Veil parts are corresponding to inter gas inter m i I sometimes give in know public talks or I sometimes visit you know primary or secondary schools to give you know lectures on astronomy and I usually show this very beautiful picture and uh kids are so excited to see a very beautiful picture of of our galaxy The Milk Way galaxy so usually people see you know stars but uh my interest is not on stars but these black parts so if we enlarge a tiny portion of the milkway Galaxy uh we can see such a nebula usually we can see a beautiful you know um landscape uh toward the galactic center Direction uh this is mesier 8 I I if I'm if I'm correct and uh here we can see you know complicated shape of black part uh this uh part corresponds to a dark molecular CLS because there are uh uh plenty of uh small solid particles inside therefore this these you know solid particles hide Starlight behind that's why these parts look so black so now uh we are able to uh understand the physical uh uh State like this uh this diagram shows uh a relation between number density in hydrogen atoms per cubic cm uh versus temperature in log scale so um there are variety of in interal gas uh some part is has very high temperature up to about 1 million K but the density is solo so this part is almost ionized that's that's why you know this this this gas is called coronal gas coronal gas can be can be found for example inside Supernova remant so uh here we have uh Atomic gas and this curve corresponds to the pressure equilibrium the pressure time times temperature becomes constant so this part is mainly uh this part uh mainly uh consists of uh hydrogen Atomic hydrogen gas and if the temperature goes down keeping the same pressure then Atomic form is converted into molecular form so in this part you know we have moleular gas and uh I I think some of you know how stars are formed and the once stars are formed the gas surrounding the stars are ionized the once they are ionized you know pressure becomes twice so we have ionized region H soal H2 region so uh for molecular Hunters uh our interest uh primality on on this part okay so this is a summary table inter inter inter gas has a density uh range between 10 Theus 3 to 10 the 10 uh hydrogen atoms per cubic cm the temperature of course ranges between 10 Kelvin and 1 million Kelvin and as I mentioned uh dense inter inter gas is formed from the atomic form to molecular form and especially for the uh molecular clouds uh parameters are like these the temperature ranges between 10 Kelvin 10 Kelvin is - 263° Celsius up to several hundred kin like here and the density range is maybe 10 the 3r to 10 to the 8th uh molecular number of molecular hydrogen per cubic cm so under these physical parameters we are able to calculate mean free time know time average time between collisions so it's about one year so a single particle may meet other particle after one year so this density range is so so low so if we are forced to go there without any know space suit what would happen so our body will be uh boiled soon and everybody becomes so dry but okay so uh we uh we have been studying such you know very very um uh less tense region and as I mentioned uh the dark Parts uh hidden by small solid particles and the temperature is solo when temperatures are solow uh almost no visible lights are emitted so this is a very famous Cloud do you know this one no this looks like an animal horse head nebula ah this is a very famous Cloud so uh this um red part you know red light corresponds to the uh visible light emitted by uh ionized hydrogen balma Alpha line so when you use uh you know optical telescope you know we usually see know this part but uh here we have just black parts and uh if we use radio telescopes then we receive almost no radio signals in this beautiful part but we have radio signals from for example uh this is a intensity distribution of carbon monoxide as you know carbon monoxide Co is so poisonous so our universe and a molecular cloud are filled with poisonous gas but don't worry they are so so rare so no worries so um we uh we uh radio molecular suras observed those regions and um the first radio telescopes were um built almost 80 years ago and uh uh after you know very good Technologies Advanced uh we were able to uh detect uh molecular emission especially in the MIM wave regions so uh we astronomers knew the existence of molecules since the end of uh 19th century so uh the first spectrum of a comment was made in the optical region that those time people had no photographs so people were able to you know take photographic Spectrum by a photo photographic uh methodology so people knew that there are some molecules small molecules around you know comets like this so this is a cometary spectrum uh in the optical region so people knew that uh carbon C2 dicarbon are ionized Co and uh CN radical but uh you know commentary Calli uh you know irradiated by uh ultraviolet fluxes from the Sun so these species uh destroyed immediately so almost 150 years ago people said oh there are some molecules but they are immediately you destroyed but uh um at those time you know uh spectroscopy Atomic or molecular spectroscopy Advanced a lot and people knew uh uh variety of atomic lines and atomic lines exist in a various ways so this simplest one is hyperin structure uh lines due to the spin spin interaction of uh uh hydrogen atom the hydrogen atom consists of a single proton and a single electron so these two particles are Fons so they have spins of a half so there are two cases you know let's assume this is a proton this is an electron so spins may be parallel in this case and maybe anti par this state has slightly higher energy this is more stable small there is small energy difference and because of this is slightly high in energy so after uh so after some time so this state becomes this state so radio emission will be available so that's the emission radi emission from a uh neutral hydrogen so if we go to an ionized regions we are able to see variety of Rec combination lines and know atoms are ionized by absorbing ultraviolet phons then they will Rec combine with protons then there are variety of energy levels and they Cascade it into various lower energy states then VAR variety of emissions uh can be available these are recombination lines um for molecular lines the molecules have in know molecular Spectrum so complicated let's assume we have uh Co carbon and oxygen they are you know connected by electromagnetic force So Co cores May rotate or this you know distance may change that there should you know uh vibration and of course there are many electrons orbiting around these course so the energy State states of electrons may vary but the you know emissions due to uh uh due to um electrons uh usually uh located in the visible or ultra violet Violet ranges so in the radio techniques we cannot see them but the pure rotational lines have very small energy so their emissions usually come to radio region especially in the mimet wave regions so that's that's why uh we use M Wave radio telescopes to study molecular lines so how do we search for them so now the transition frequencies are available by laboratory microwave spectroscopists they are very good at predicting know transition frequencies so we you know ASAS have to have very good friends of spectroscopists so this is another you know know uh research collaboration so labat spectroscopies are very good at measuring Spectrum in the lab and we are they are very good at calculating uh molecular Spectrum so uh once you know transition frequencies become available we chose we choose you know the best or most appropriate transitions to be observed because radio telescopes usually have a limited uh bandwidth uh spectral ranges to observe so we need to calculate intensity distributions where we are able to see the strongest lines for example so uh we sometimes conduct in a spectral line surveys because uh a single species uh emits radio waves in a variety of frequencies so if we observe only a single line there are there could be other possibilities this line may be reconciled by other species so we need to observe multiple frequencies to do that no it is required to cover very wide frequency ranges so uh U we sometimes conduct an spectral line surveys and after detecting candidates we will try to identify you know detected species by accessing you know transition databases which are uh created and maintained by laboratory spectroscopists and once we have unknown lines unknown means nobody nobody have has measured even in Laboratories and on those cases uh we analyze you a relation between among uh detected uh radio lines and if we are able to find harmonic relations then we try to reproduce those species in LA and uh if successful we are able to claim new detections so we did that for more than 20 years so so these days and many lines can be obtained efficiently because you know we have very sensitive receivers and uh you know the detectors sometimes have very wide uh spectral ranges so this is the general idea so uh radias and laboratory spectroscopists collaborated for a long time and uh in radioamy uh we have long history in the detection of molecules uh in 1969 uh we uhas detected form alide you may think you know form alide is not a big molecule but if we compare the size you know form alide consists of four atoms the prior to that people knew much much smaller molec to diatomic molecules only so 40 years ago you know ASA said oh we found such a big molecule but after that you know uh we was we succeeded to find carbon monoxide uh methanol this is six atom molecule and we have many more the many of them as you can easily see many many of them organic so even at the 1970s you know we had a a big part a big list of organic species of course there are other inorganic species as well and uh when I usually uh give talks on uh uh such um organ species I usually mention about uh your favorite material a bit larger than methanol and in every country you have nice in France you have nice wine we here we can enjoy saon beer so e alcohol is also detected so I I I I don't see the list here MyWay oh here here here it is so many famous complex organic molecules were detected in 1970s so um for our case we use as as I mentioned we use the 455 Rue telescopes in noama and we were able to discover 17 species our first one was C6 H it's a very funny uh carbon chain molecule uh a single line is split into tablet due to the Fine structure and each fine structure line is further split into hyper fine components so we can see four lines simultaneously so the separation of the fper fine uh splitting and the separations of hyper uh excuse me separations of fine structure lines and separations of between hyperfine structure lines will tell the structure of the candidate molecule so we were able to identify by using such spectroscopic knowledge so um we conducted a spectral line survey uh between 8.8 and 50 GHz uh it took almost 10 years 10 years toward the Taurus molecular cloud one which is a very famous very cold moleular cloud and each spectral line is so narrow and narrow and weak that's why we need to spend 10 years but uh as far as I know no other groups in the world can conduct a similar spectral line survey so after conducting you know this spectral line survey we were able to find you know uh 16 17 new species as well so such a research method is quite efficient so can see HC hc3n hc5n H7 n C4 H is another radical so for laboratory spectroscopists you know such Spectrum would be very very U attractive so um we are able to see Mo molecules not only dark clouds but in a very cold um uh Cloud course in the infrared uh range so this is an sample Spectrum obtained uh in the mid infer region and we can see several absorption features this is carbon dioxide sorry the the fonts become you know black so this cor this absorption dip corresponds to carbon dioxide and uh this one this tiny one corresponds to methane and here we have uh you know clear absorption features due to solid water H2O so uh nowadays we know that uh uh there are a bunch of uh solid phase water in the in the solid phase okay so not only radio but the infite region is very U uh efficient in finding U uh molecules especially uh nonpolar species so some years ago the Europe European Space Agency launched infrared satellite Observatory ISO and they were able to uh identify carbon dioxide uh HF Benzene and so on these are nonpolar species HF is polar but CO2 has no electric dipole moment so they emit no radio signals but uh you know the vibration they have vibrations so we people are able to see infared Spectrum so uh the detection history continues up to today so uh 6 years ago uh people were able to discover C60 is a ferin it it it's the shape looks like a sucker ball and uh there are variety of of you know organic molecules so far detected by using very large M met wave telescopes so this is an know a long list so I would not uh mention about the details however uh these days uh we have much sens more sensitive uh telescope such as Alma which is located in Chile so people are able to see uh other more complex uh molecular species very soon so uh in summary we have about 190 uh molecules so far uh in the inter space and circum spaces so there are various ways to classify those in 190 molecules in the space and one idea is first of all to have simple molecules molecule hydrogen Co water CO2 ammonia and so so and so on I should tell you that molecular hydrogen is the most abundant molecule in the universe and the second most abundant space is are Co and water and uh we have a variety of ions molecular ions so if you look compare these two you can easily see you know H3 plus is related to H2 you know if we add a proton to molecular hydrogen it becomes H3 plus ion the same and we have many radicals radicals are very reactive they you if we have a radical species here that they react immediate immediately but uh as I showed you the physical parameters of the molecular space molecular cloud the average you know time between Collision or meeting is one year so even if a species is very reactive there are no Partners to meet so they stay as they are so that's that's why we can see a variety of ions radicals and something something and as I already mentioned we have a variety of stable molecules which are very familiar to us so uh we are now able to see uh you know these species uh toward variety of sources uh for example starless scores star scores is a place where no stars are being formed usually they are so quiet so cold so no emissions are seen but uh we when we have we we use know sensitive radio telescopes we are able to see a variety of you know complex uh species and uh this is a um meth formate U this is an isomer to vinegar acetic acid that that's quite strange that uh in in in the universe you know acetic acid exists less than its isomer methy formate in other words you know our molecular spaces is not so uh uh sour so we can we can see you know strong signals of you know metal formate toward the center of the or nebula Orion KL is star star forming region inside the Orion Nebula or uh we can see now funny long carbon chains toward the center of this black part so here you can see Spectra these corresponds to negative ions so la spe spectroscopists you know uh have so you know negative ions for a long time but by using radio telescopes they finally discovered negative ions so now we have Alma so we are able to see uh less abundant species for example now we are able to see glycol alide this is uh um this is actually not a sugar but this is related with sugar so I think during the coffee time you you get some sugar but this this species is related with sugar and Alma detected you know sugar related species toward you know small star forming regions that are binaries I know in its name is something something and we are able to see you know signals from these species and the molecules exist in circum shs you know um he he he mentioned that uh you know a star for example you know our sun will you know expand after 5 billion years from now so once the uh star becomes such you know uh red giants so uh materials are escaped from the surface and they create shells so now we are able to see molecules in those shells so we there are variety of species observed toward circum shells and uh we are able to observe uh you know so many molecules even toward extra Galactic sources so if if you are interested in uh uh to study the further details I would suggest the cdms colon database of molecular spectroscopy so you can easily find uh this database uh on on the internet cdms so oops uh this is a small list of complex organic molecules because you know this training school is related should be related with astrobiology so I would like to this several and complex organic species as I mentioned uh we have you know alcohols atic acid uh methyl formate uh diameter e this is acetone glycol alide that we have organic molecules containing both carbon and nitrogen atoms uh so now we have about 100 complex complex Organics molecules uh however no amino acids have so far been detected so the a discovery of a amino acid would be an interest to many people but uh in the last 40 years astronomers tried challenge to find amino acids and all trials failed yeah that's the one of the reason why you know we invested a lot of money to construct and operate the alma telescope one of the very important scientific theme for Alma is to find amino acids [Applause] okay um I should tell more complex Organics uh this is a Mass Spectrum uh observed toward uh Comet view number two in the so you you can see you know this you know how I don't know how how to express but uh you know we we can see a variety of benzene cores so uh when we observe you know comments or meteorites uh we are able to to detect such you know more evolved uh organic uh species so they are usually referred to poly cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons P's and they they may have such a such such shapes and uh we can uh see infrared obser uh absorption features toward several uh sources uh they are attributed to PS and uh according to the president of uh commission f do3 s s qu he will show up very soon so there are much larger species like these and uh these may be formed around an evolved STS and they may create no more complex species okay this is evolv St so uh how we derive physical parameters this is a bit uh um Technical and uh I will uh explain very very rapidly so when we observe you know variety of molecular lines we have to analyze the excitation status there are many energy levels and uh and a molecule should be distributed uh under thermal dynamical equilibrium this is just an assumption so uh W uh expresses integrated intensity know line has this shape so this area corresponds to the inte integrated intensity so this is the one of the observable so what we want to derive are uh column density a number of molecules per unit uh area per square cm along the line of sight and uh temperature to describe the bolman distribution so these are parameters that can be obtained by uh microwave spectroscopic studies so for example we are able to draw such diagrams so these are So-Cal rotation diagrams as I mentioned we are assume the boltzman distribution with t rotation rotation this so called rotation temperature so um uh we we have to assume that all lines are thin optically thin then it is quite easy to derive such diagrams then we are able to derive the uh temperature and uh number of uh molecules okay let's skip that so uh sometimes we Face some difficulties in deriving um accurate uh rotational temperatures and calm densities for those cases we utilize non local thermodynamical equilibrium analysis so we have to solve equations of statist statistical equilibrium by manipulating radiative excitation and de exitation collisional excitation and de exitation processes so this is more complicated so I won't I won't tell you the further details there are variety of methods to you know derve you know physical parameters so uh as those uh as results now we are able to derive uh molecular abundances abundances toward variety of sources so this is a sample uh this uh histograms uh these histograms compare molecular abundances among Orion the Orion Nebula uh towards molecular cloud one this is a typical cold Dark Cloud Orion at the center of Orion massive for formation is now going on and rc+ 10 to 16 is a typical uh circum shell um object so these a list of species so uh molecular hydrogen is the most abundant one uh toward any source and Co has a relative abundance to molecular hydrogen of 10 Theus 4 okay so this is the second uh uh second most abundant species and methanol here we have methanol the black corresponds to Orion toward Orion methanol is so rich but for other two sources almost nothing so we can see such you know uh differences among different physical regions on the other hand we have long carbon chains reach long carbon chains toward very cold dark cloud while uh L these long carbon chains are very much less toward or k so why so on to to answer those questions we have to consider you know formation uh schemes uh on molecules so um as I mentioned um H2 is the most abundant species in molecular clouds the co and H2 or water is the second richest species who have a relative abundance to H2 of 10us 4 and there are variety of molecular ions radicals they because they are charged so they can react by utilizing electron electromagnetic you know attraction so once a molecule meets an electron then they can immediately they can react combine immediately and a photon will be emitted so that's the idea and uh there have been two major uh reaction schemes so far one is gas phase reactions because uh molecules detected in molecular clouds exist in gas phase so this is a very natural idea that those species is we formed in gas phase another idea is because we know there are you know small particles no dust particles solid phases so molecules may be formed on the solid phase and they may be evaporated from the surface so the first one gas Fates uh reactions uh before explaining I should tell that uh I use several slides which she created so correct me if I'm wrong so um the uh easiest um um reactions uh neutral neutral reactions because we saw so many neutral species so neutral species may react but uh under very low temperature it is almost impossible because neutral neutral reactions usually have activation energy to proceed because the temperature is so low so the kinetic energy cannot overcome the activation energy so it is very inefficient at low temperature then instead if a neutral species is ionized by cosmic ray high energy particle then or UV Photon they become very reactive State then those you know ionic or R radical species may react with other neutral species so that's the idea and socalled ion neutral reactions once you know ion neutral reactions occur you know the uh the products may have some a bit higher energy so the the excess energy maybe uh uh maybe U emitted by by photons or kinetic energy of uh uh fragment of the reactants so that that was uh to some extent very successful uh this is her uh one of her results so uh uh people try to explain uh observed abundances of these species and uh they developed a nice model you know as a uh which which evolves as a function of time so the best fit are shown here for some species such as s SO2 CS uh you know the model model and observed values much quite well so uh that you know yeah yeah nasan concluded yeah this is nice but we are able to see some large discrepancies such as dimethyl ether the calculation and The observed value have large discrepancy you know if we trust the model we are able to estimate the age of the source that we observed mhm of course if time goes on you know chemical abundances of those those species vary usually chemical models are incomplete because you know uh reaction data uh not complete so you know it is an idea to estimate and age of The Source by analyzing the chemical species soal chemical age but uh you know estimated chemical ages have large you know errors but anyhow um if we trace this this know these CH time variation time Evolution so uh the chemical abundances will will become stable uh steady state but before reaching steady state you know almost all molecular clouds collaps into different physical status uh usually you know chemical species absorb toward onto n dust grines if time time goes on so uh transition from gas phase to solid phase occur so that's that's why you know those curves decrease as you see you know there are some you know discrepancies uh which cannot be uh reconciled solely by gas phase reactions so one idea is to introduce in solid phase reactions um this is a very old picture that just describing the structure of uh you know dust particle uh dust particle have its core which uh you know uh created during uh uh uh in the evolved Stars you know you you saw the circum shells so the the evolved Stars you emit know carbon atoms and so and so on toward you know outward and then those are condensed to into uh you know very small uh cords and uh time after in uh sometimes goes on then uh gas phase uh water because the temperature so low gas phase water can sublimate onto the surface they making you know ice so we have ice surrounding the the course so once we have uh gas phase molecules absorbed onto you know those dust particles other kinds of reactions may occur so um this is one idea on the surface reactions when temperature is Sol low so as I mentioned uh on the dust surface a variety of uh Atomic species or molecular species are absorbed from the gas phase and uh you know hydrogen is the most abundant you know atom and when the temperature is so low the hydrogen atom experiences the tunneling effect so hydrogen atom once absorbed that moves to react and react the you know those absorbed species then they form for example methane water ammonia and so so so if we assume these you know mechanisms then we we can expect absorption spectrum of water methane and other species on cold dust particles actually this is an uh infared Spectrum observed toward w33 a by ISO and now we can see methane water uh Co absorption lines as well as meth methanol absorption lines so now we we know that a variety of solid phase species exist on Dust particles so before St formation the no molecular clouds are so cold with the temperature of about 10 Kelvin so this s reaction proceeds but uh you know inside a molecular cloud and a star formation process goes on then once a star is formed inside then a star emits you know Optical or Ultra wide uh excuse me not with the wide one with the Violet photons and those photons are then absorbed by uh dust particles they heating those particles then you know evaporation or sub occurs so solid phase particles are moved to gas phas to the gas phas which are then observed by radio telescopes or infrared telescopes so uh by using this idea we are able to uh explain the observed abundances of some you know species especially organic species so uh now we know some bit a bit about you know formation of molecules especially um large organic compound organic species which are related to astrobiology um we have of course everybody has parents yes so each parent has his or her parents so the relation continues forever but what is the first life so yeah this is a very very um um serious problem for all of us and uh even uh uh 600 years ago from now uh people discussed in in Greece or any other countries discussed how you know lives were formed so the natural idea is that uh you know the lives you know emerged on the Earth by utilizing organic material formed on this planet but uh it was all almost um 20 or 30 years ago uh we found that uh the formation of organic molecules on the earth is not sufficient to to create you know we don't know how how you know lives are formed but uh um if we assume you know the um atmosphere with the uh rather acidic uh oxidized uh oxidized at atmosphere uh people have found that it was very difficult to form bunch of uh organic uh species on the earth then instead the idea was you know uh we now know that the organic molecules are formed in moleular clouds which are then kept to form while no forming stars and planets and of course know comets and metes are formed uh simultaneously in the star formation process and we know that uh about 4 billion years ago so many comets and meteorites fell onto the Earth so-called heavy a late heavy bombardment so for so so those phenomena might have brought a bunch of organic molecules as well as water so now we are able to assume that molecules formed in the molecular in moleular clouds are the Seas of life at Le this planet if this is the nice idea and the correct idea similar process may go on on other planets so uh we know that uh organic building blocks exist for example in some uh ploto planetary discs this is one of famous uh star forming region of fucus RS 46 now we can see um CO2 hcn um acyline in absorptions but uh due to uh According to some analysis the temperature distribution can be described like with these very high temperature so there should be very dense cloud and the molecules exist there that they are heed up but kept [Music] unchanged and uh in The Last 5 Years uh we had uh very exciting uh discoveries so nasza launched a wonderful Mission Stardust which approached to the core of comet build number to and they discovered you know glycine from the ejector of that comment the mission captured an ejector and kept them into into a capsule the capsule was returned to the Earth and an then people analyzed the content of the capsule and reported to the det the detection of glassing but uh this is always a the case that people always doubt oh the capsules may be contaminated by terrestrial you know amino acids but uh this year yeah there was a new report on the on the in C2 measurement of commentary glycine that was that was done by the Rosetta Mission so Catherine out reported a clear result on the detection secure detection of uh amino acid and glycine toward us at least one comment so then we may have uh question are the amino acids and the precursors to in the inter molecular clouds cuz we know you know diffused cloud and the star forming region Comet planets are linked together the if amino acids exist in this phase they might have uh kept they might have delivered to the Earth or to other planets so um now we have such an hypothesis but before we have such an hypothesis uh astronomers tried to search for amino acids so Brown at he is a spectroscopist laboratory spectroscopist he made the first measurement of uh microwave spectrum of glycine 40 years ago and uh he conducted a very sensitive at that time observation of gine but he failed and there are other trials to detect you know glycin and all trials failed so that there should be a various reasons why people failed one reason would be you know telescopes had no uh had the the the sensitivity of the telescopes they used were not sufficient so that's the idea why you know people constructed and operating uh the alma telescope the dma has a very very high sensitivity but even if we have very good sensitivities we have to understand how actually glassing and other Amin acids are formed so many researchers suggest Ted you know formation possible formation scenarios know toward ging so we have to understand which would be the best you the most promising path to form gin so the question what is the most dominant formation path to gling in space so uh we have conducted uh you know chemical Network simulation in investigating the dominant process to form gine so uh I'm not going to the details but we use know well established chemical model and we use um maybe the best best database but of course each each reaction data may be incomplete it so uh we uh solved um um the amount of changes in abundances by using this equation this is gas phase production gas phase destruction uh evaporation from the solid phase to the gas phase absorption EXC this is typo absorption from the gas phase to the solid phase so we treated uh about 7,000 species so we have to solve simultaneous equations know 700 simultaneous equations as a function of time um we assumed that uh you know the cloud molecular cloud starts you know diffuse phase then it collapses to form very very dense part then once the core dense core is formed you know a star may be formed inside then the temperature rises up to 200k or 400k now this temperature is enough to know accelerate evaporation from the solid phase to get to the gas phase so under this assumed physical condition we are able to compare uh formation rates of ging on grains so uh this is a uh uh model old model conducted by Robin gallot garot uh in Germany so this is time this is the formation rate how many um molecules are formed per cubic cm per second so people uh Robin gett assumed that the glycin may be formed through h plus ch2 nh2 the H comes from formic acid HC so in our simulation we added we we added newly uh proposed uh formation path you know this one this one methyl amine plus CO2 under UV radiation as when we addit this path then the formation rate between h o radical and H C H2 nh2 radical increased by more than two orders of magnitude so we have found that uh you know this process you know especially H comes from CO2 and as I mentioned CO2 is one of the know abundant species on in in the solid phase so CO2 is everywhere and uh if we have abundant uh methyl amine this is the source of ch2 nh2 we can expect abundant ging so we have found that uh methyl amine plus CO2 under UV radiation would lead to much glycin so we should use the alma telescope to succeed in the detection of glycine for the first time so we have now the theoretical predictions so uh we'd like to try to search for that so this is the last slide um we already have about 190 molecules in the uh molecular space they exist in a variety of physical environment such as low or high mass star forming regions protoplanetary nebul molecules exist in comets evolv Stars extra galaxies and so and so on and Prebiotic molecules are known to exist in intercellular molecular clouds in including and precursors to glycin so Alma and other Next Generation facilities I I'm I'm hoping that the Elma and the other Next Generation sensitive facilities may discover you know the seed of life of course you know amino acid itself cannot directly lead to life you know but if we are able to find a bunch of of you know seeds then uh follow up you know chemical reactions in a more complicated sense may lead to the origin of life so I'm going to finish and I have I have 10 minutes more for uh questions and answers okay thanks [Applause] [Music]