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Glycine is the simplest proteinaceous amino acid and is present in all life-forms on Earth. In aqueous solutions, it appears mainly as zwitterion glycine (+NH3CH2COO-); however, in solid phase, it may be found in amorphous or crystalline (alpha, beta, and gamma) forms. This molecular species has been extensively detected in carbonaceous meteorites and was recently observed in the cometary samples returned to Earth by NASAs Stardust spacecraft. We present an experimental study on the destruction of zwitterionic glycine crystals at room temperature by 1 MeV protons, in which the dependence of the destruction rates of the alpha-glycine and beta-glycine crystals on bombardment fluence is investigated. The samples were analyzed in situ by FTIR spectrometry at different proton fluences at under ultrahigh vacuum conditions at the Van de Graaff accelerator lab at PUC-Rio, Brazil. The dissociation cross section of alpha-glycine was observed to be 2.5E-14 cm^-2, a value roughly 5 times higher than the dissociation cross section found for beta-glycine. The estimated half-lives of alpha-glycine and beta-glycine forms extrapolated to the Earth orbit environment are 9E5 and 4E6 years, respectively. In the diffuse interstellar medium the estimated values are 1 order of magnitude lower. These results suggest that pristine interstellar beta-glycine is the one most likely to survive the hostile environments of space radiation. A small feature around 1650-1700 cm^-1, tentatively attributed to an amide functional group, was observed in the IR spectra of irradiated samples, suggesting that cosmic rays may induce peptide bond synthesis in glycine crystals. Combining this finding with the fact that this form has the highest solubility among the other glycine polymorphs, we suggest that beta-glycine is the one most likely to have produced the first peptides on primitive Earth.
The photochemical haze produced in the upper atmosphere of Titan plays a key role in various atmospheric and surface processes on Titan. The surface energy, one important physical properties of the haze, is crucial for understanding the growth of the
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We present a novel mechanism for the outward transport of crystalline dust particles: the outward radial drift of pebbles. The dust ring structure is frequently observed in protoplanetary disks. One of the plausible mechanisms of the formation of dus
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Double differential cross sections (DDCS) for light charged particles (proton, deuteron, triton, 3He, alpha) and neutrons produced by a proton beam impinging on a 238U target at 62.9 MeV were measured at the CYCLONE facility in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belg