Extraterrestrial ices are observed in many astrophysical environments linked to the formation of stars and planetary systems but also disks and various debris such as comets and asteroids. The chemical evolution of these ices following photo- and thermo-chemistry is routinely simulated in the laboratory. These simulations always end with the building up and recovery at room temperature, of...
Life is a non-equilibrium system, which is nowadays maintained by a highly developed energy conversion machinery. Four billion years ago, other non-equilibrium mechanisms were needed to kick-start living processes. We propose ubiquitous heat fluxes as suitable driving force: Thermal gradients across water filled pores lead to a concurrent fluid convection and directed movement of dissolved...
One of the most fundamental questions for humanity is how life emerge on Earth and in this context how were the first prebiotic organic compounds formed and distributed. Therefore it is necessary to find and investigate environmental archives that retained information from the early Earth.
The analysis of fluid iclusions (FIs) is a widely used geochemical tool to determine thermobaric and...
Despite a rather low elemental abundance of $\sim 3\times 10^{-7}$ (Asplund et al. 2009), Phosphorus is one of the main biogenic elements, present in all life forms on Earth. As such, phosphorus-bearing compounds, in particular their P--O bonds, play a key role in many biochemical and metabolic processes in living systems. However, Phosphorus chemistry in the interstellar medium has received...
