Program Results

Introduction to the event

One of the central questions in astrophysics is how life emerges in the universe. The organic molecules that are relevant for life start to form on dust grains before the formation of stars. With the new space telescope JWST (~$10 billion), we can start to detect and characterize these organic molecules.

In March and April 2023, my international collaborators and I published two results in Nature and Nature Astronomy. As a member of the JWST ERS project ‘Ice Age’, we published the first results in Nature Astronomy. It shows that complex organic molecules relevant to life are formed very early during the star formation process. The early results analyzed the solid state features of various molecules frozen on dust grains. Meanwhile, in the Nature article, we have used ALMA to show that Earth’s water is inherited from the ice formed before the planets were formed. We compared the D/H ratio of water to comets, and Earth’s water.

International press releases and coverage by BBC:

• Webb Unveils Dark Side of Pre-stellar Ice Chemistry
• Webb telescope hunts life's icy chemical origins
• Astronomers find missing link for water in the Solar System

Molecular cloud image observed by the New James Webb Space Telescope

The group meeting at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, US