Colloquium: Astrochemistry and the Origin of Life

© Veronica Allen / generated from DALL·E 2

How did we get here? Are we alone in the universe? These questions are as old as humanity. As technology advances, we can increase our understanding of how life got started on Earth and how it could begin in other places. Astrochemistry as a field has grown immensely in recent years and, with the advent of ALMA in particular, has unveiled hundreds of molecular species which are able to form in space, including several prebiotic molecules. The first prebiotic molecule detected in space, formamide (NH2CHO) has been shown to be a precursor to amino acids in the conditions of early Earth. Despite over 20 years of study, formamide has no clear dominant formation reaction. In my talk, I will explain the astrobiological and astrochemical tools used to address the origin of life in general and speak about my own observational and theoretical work on understanding the formation of formamide in various environments.