Precursors of fatty alcohols in the ISM: Discovery of n-propanol

Autor: Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, Lucas F. Rodríguez-Almeida, Jesús Martín-Pintado, Víctor M. Rivilla, Mattia Melosso, Shaoshan Zeng, Laura Colzi, Yoshiyuki Kawashima, Eizi Hirota, Cristina Puzzarini, Belén Tercero, Pablo de Vicente, Fernando Rico-Villas, Miguel A. Requena-Torres, Sergio Martín
Přispěvatelé: Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, Lucas F. Rodríguez-Almeida, Jesús Martín-Pintado, Víctor M. Rivilla, Mattia Melosso, Shaoshan Zeng, Laura Colzi, Yoshiyuki Kawashima, Eizi Hirota, Cristina Puzzarini, Belén Tercero, Pablo de Vicente, Fernando Rico-Villa, Miguel A. Requena-Torre, Sergio Martín
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Popis: Theories on the origins of life propose that early cell membranes were synthesized from amphiphilic molecules simpler than phospholipids such as fatty alcohols. The discovery in the interstellar medium (ISM) of ethanolamine, the simplest phospholipid head group, raises the question whether simple amphiphilic molecules are also synthesized in space. We investigate whether precursors of fatty alcohols are present in the ISM. For this, we have carried out a spectral survey at 7, 3, 2 and 1 mm toward the Giant Molecular Cloud G+0.693-0.027 located in the Galactic Center using the IRAM 30m and Yebes 40m telescopes. Here, we report the detection in the ISM of the primary alcohol n-propanol (in both conformers Ga-n-C3H7OH and Aa-n-C3H7OH), a precursor of fatty alcohols. The derived column densities of n-propanol are (5.5+-0.4)x10^13 cm^-2 for the Ga conformer and (3.4+-0.3)x10^13 cm^-2 for the Aa conformer, which imply molecular abundances of (4.1+-0.3)x10^-10 for Ga-n-C3H7OH and of (2.5+-0.2)x10^-10 for Aa-n-C3H7OH. We also searched for the AGa conformer of n-butanol (AGa-n-C4H9OH) without success yielding an upper limit to its abundance of
15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for A&A
Databáze: OpenAIRE