PAH's Responsible for "Red Glow"

New work from NAI NASA Ames Research Center Team members and their colleagues published recently in PNAS suggests that the cause for much of the extended red emission, or ERE, is due to closed-shell cationic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, or PAH, dimers. Their work sheds light on the processes involved in carbonaceous dust evolution in the interstellar medium.

April 8, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Spitzer Telecope Data Suggest that Life's Building Blocks are Abundant

Infrared astronomers are discovering that compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) constitute one the largest reservoirs of carbon in space. New observations confirm that PAHs are abundant, even in distant galaxies. Investigator Doug Huggins notes that “This stuff contains the building blocks of life, and now we can say they’re abundant in space. And wherever there’s a planet out there, we know that these things are going to be raining down on it.”

October 18, 2005 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Spitzer Finds Carbon Compounds in Young Universe

This news story is based on a JPL/NASA press release dated July 28, 2005, which reports that the Spitzer Space Telescope has found the ingredients for life all the way back to a time when the universe was a mere youngster.

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July 31, 2005 / Posted by: Shige Abe