Prospecting for interstellar oil

We have developed a new method to look for carbon compounds in space, akin to prospecting for oil on Earth. Our method is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A sanitizer in the galactic center region

An international group of researchers led by Arnaud Belloche (MPIfR, Bonn, Germany) reports the first identification of iso-propanol in interstellar space, a substance which is used as a sanitizer on Earth. Iso-propanol is ...

Taking quantum control of life's building blocks

Life (as we know it) is based on carbon. Despite its ubiquity, this important element still holds plenty of secrets, on earth and in the heavens above us. For example, astrophysicists like Columbia's Daniel Wolf Savin who ...

Capturing electrons in space

Interstellar clouds are the birthplaces of new stars, but they also play an important role in the origins of life in the Universe through regions of dust and gas in which chemical compounds form. The research group, molecular ...

Cold molecular clouds as cosmic ray detectors

The ionization of the neutral gas in an interstellar molecular cloud plays a key role in the cloud's evolution, helping to regulate the heating and cooling processes, the chemistry and molecule formation, and coupling the ...

Found in space: Complex carbon-based molecules

Much of the carbon in space is believed to exist in the form of large molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Since the 1980s, circumstantial evidence has indicated that these molecules are abundant in space, ...

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