PubMed · 15205523
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Anny-Chantal Levasseur-Regourd. 2004-06-18. Cometary dust unveiled.. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1100601
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Infrared spectra of material captured from comet 81P/Wild 2 by the Stardust spacecraft reveal indigenous aliphatic hydrocarbons similar to those in interplanetary dust particles thought to be derived from comets, but with longer chain lengths than those observed in the diffuse interstellar medium. Similarly, the Stardust samples contain abundant amorphous silicates in addition to crystalline silicates such as olivine and pyroxene. The presence of crystalline silicates in Wild 2 is consistent with mixing of solar system and interstellar matter. No hydrous silicates or carbonate minerals were detected, which suggests a lack of aqueous processing of Wild 2 dust.
Although still poorly understood, the chemistry that occurs on the surfaces of interstellar dust particles profoundly affects the growth of molecules in the interstellar medium. The most important surface reaction is the conversion of atomic to molecular hydrogen, which is a precursor for all subsequent molecular development and which occurs both in diffuse and dense interstellar clouds. Another set of surface reactions produces icy mantles of many monolayers in cold and dense regions of the interstellar medium. The monolayers are dominated by water ice but also contain CO, CO(2), and occasionally methanol. In this work, we first review both our stochastic approach to the surface chemistry that can occur on small dust particles and how it has been applied to the problem of the formation of molecular hydrogen. This latter problem is strongly affected by the pulsed heating of smaller grains by photons. Photons are not the only source of pulsed heating; cosmic rays also can heat interstellar grains in a pulsed manner. Here, we calculate the heating by cosmic rays for different grain sizes and cosmic ray components. It is then shown that this mechanism is an important one for desorption of ice mantles.
Organic matter in extraterrestrial materials has isotopic anomalies in hydrogen and nitrogen that suggest an origin in the presolar molecular cloud or perhaps in the protoplanetary disk. Interplanetary dust particles are generally regarded as the most primitive solar system matter available, in part because until recently they exhibited the most extreme isotope anomalies. However, we show that hydrogen and nitrogen isotopic compositions in carbonaceous chondrite organic matter reach and even exceed those found in interplanetary dust particles. Hence, both meteorites (originating from the asteroid belt) and interplanetary dust particles (possibly from comets) preserve primitive organics that were a component of the original building blocks of the solar system.