Science with an ngVLA: Prebiotic Molecules

TL;DR

This paper discusses how the next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) can advance our understanding of prebiotic molecules by improving detection and analysis of chemical inventories in star and planet formation regions.

Contribution

It highlights specific use cases where ngVLA will significantly enhance the study of prebiotic molecules and their formation pathways.

Findings

ngVLA will improve detection of low-abundance prebiotic species

Enhanced spatial and temporal mapping of chemical inventories

Refinement of chemical models of star and planet formation processes

Abstract

Extraterrestrial amino acids, the chemical building blocks of the biopolymers that comprise life as we know it on Earth are present in meteoritic samples. More recently, glycine (NH$_2$CH$_2$COOH), the simplest amino acid, was detected by the Rosetta mission in comet 67P. Despite these exciting discoveries, our understanding of the chemical and physical pathways to the formation of (pre)biotic molecules is woefully incomplete. This is largely because our knowledge of chemical inventories during the different stages of star and planet formation is incomplete. It is therefore imperative to solidify our accounting of the chemical inventories, especially of critical yet low-abundance species, in key regions and to use this knowledge to inform, expand, and constrain chemical models of these reactions. This is followed naturally by a requirement to understand the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of this inventory. Here, we briefly outline a handful of particularly-impactful use cases in which the ngVLA will drive the field forward.