Publications by authors named "Ryan A Loomis"
Article Synopsis
- Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are complex organic molecules with multiple interconnected aromatic rings, commonly found in space.
- Researchers discovered 1-cyanopyrene, a specific type of PAH derived from pyrene, in the dense cloud TMC-1 using the Green Bank Telescope.
- The findings imply that PAHs, particularly pyrene, play a significant role in contributing carbon to young planetary systems, suggesting they originate from cold molecular clouds.
We have conducted an extensive search for nitrogen-, oxygen-, and sulfur-bearing heterocycles toward Taurus Molecular Cloud 1 (TMC-1) using the deep, broadband centimeter-wavelength spectral line survey of the region from the GOTHAM large project on the Green Bank Telescope. Despite their ubiquity in terrestrial chemistry, and the confirmed presence of a number of cyclic and polycyclic hydrocarbon species in the source, we find no evidence for the presence of any heterocyclic species. Here, we report the derived upper limits on the column densities of these molecules obtained by Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis and compare this approach to traditional single-line upper limit measurements.
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- * Researchers used spectral matched filtering with radio data from the Green Bank Telescope and identified two types of nitrile-group-functionalized PAHs, 1- and 2-cyanonaphthalene, in the interstellar medium, specifically in the TMC-1 molecular cloud.
- * The paper explores possible gas-phase formation pathways for these PAHs from smaller organic precursor molecules that exist in space.
Life on Earth relies on chiral molecules-that is, species not superimposable on their mirror images. This manifests itself in the selection of a single molecular handedness, or homochirality, across the biosphere. We present the astronomical detection of a chiral molecule, propylene oxide (CH3CHCH2O), in absorption toward the Galactic center.
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