Day: 2024/04/25
Hours: 11:30 p.m
Place: Adela Moua Hall
Towards prebiotic chemistry in the interstellar medium
Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, Department of Astrophysics, Center for Astrophysics (CAB).
Over the past decade, astrophysics has seen a significant increase in the number of new molecular species discovered in space. Most of these discoveries are related to complex organic molecules, defined as carbon-based compounds with more than five atoms in their molecular structure. Interestingly, some of these complex organisms are of prebiotic interest, such as aminoacetonitrile, a potential precursor of glycine. In the past few years, we have acquired ultra-sensitive, broadband spectroscopic observations of a molecular cloud in the galactic center, G+0.693, known to be one of the richest chemical repositories in the Milky Way. Our spectroscopic studies with the IRAM 30m and Yebes 40m telescopes have identified 23 new molecular species, including precursors of ribonucleotides, nucleobases, amino acids, sugars, proto-proteins and proto-lipids. of life. In this talk, I will present these recent findings and analyze how chemical complexity develops in the galactic medium, not only in the extreme environment of the galactic core, but also in the early and quiescent conditions of solar system formation.
Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, Department of Astrophysics, Center for Astrophysics (CAB).
The speaker of the talk, Izaskun Jiménez-Serra is a scientist at the Centro de Astrobiología en Madrid (CAB), where he studies chemical complexity in the interstellar medium (ISM). He investigates the formation of complex organic molecules (COMs) as precursors of prebiotic compounds. Recently, Izaskun was awarded a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant to search for prebiotic molecules in space to determine whether molecules key to the origin of life could be present in molecular clouds. In his talk, Izaskun will talk about the evolution of detection methods over the past years and the fascinating discoveries that can be made with powerful radio telescopes.