Almost all of the planets discovered to date (including the solar system planets) are confined to the plane of the Milky Way, and are unable to glimpse a sweeping vista of our galaxy. However, astronomers at the University of Hawaiʻi (IfA) using telescopes at the on Maunakea have discovered a rocky planet with a different kind of view.

The planet orbits the star TESS Object of Interest (TOI) 561, named for the ongoing NASA TESS planet hunting mission. TOI-561 belongs to a rare population of stars called the galactic thick disk. Thick disk stars are chemically distinct, with fewer trace heavy elements (and especially less iron) than typical stars of the Milky Way, suggesting they formed early, approximately 10 billion years ago. They also have wandering motions that can lift them out of the galactic plane, providing an epic view of our own spiral galaxy.

“The rocky planet orbiting TOI-561 is one of the oldest rocky planets yet discovered. Its existence shows that the universe has been forming rocky planets almost since its inception 14 billion years ago,” said Lauren Weiss, Beatrice Watson Parrent Postdoctoral Fellow at IfA and leader of the team that discovered the TOI-561 planetary system.

The result was announced at a press conference at the January 2021 meeting of the American Astronomical Society and published in .

The rocky planet orbiting TOI-561 transits its star, meaning that the planet passes in front of its star as seen from Earth, blocking a fraction of the starlight. The planet is small, with a radius only one and a half times that of Earth. As a result, the reduction of light it causes is miniscule, just 0.025% of the star’s brightness.

IfA astronomers noticed this change in intensity and used Keck Observatory’s High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer to confirm the presence of the planet. By measuring the wobble of the star induced by the planet’s gravity, they were able to infer that the planet has three times the mass of Earth. Combining this mass with the radius determined from the transits, the team concluded that the planet is most likely rocky, perhaps with less iron than Earth.

TOI-561 has at least two other planets transiting the star, both of which have about twice Earth’s radius and are too large and low-mass to be rocky.

For more information see the .

Astronomers on Maunakea found a massive star cluster in the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way. The stars in the globular cluster, called RBC EXT8 were found using the W. M. Keck Observatory and Canada-France-Hawaiʻi Telescope.

Observations show RBC EXT8 contains a record-breaking low amount of metals. The discovery puzzled astronomers because it challenges the thought that such formations had to contain a considerable amount of heavy elements.

The study, led by Søren Larsen of Radboud University in the Netherlands, . University of California Observatories astronomer Aaron Romanowsky co-authored the study.

“I’m amazed that this remarkable star cluster was just sitting under our noses. It is one of the brightest clusters in the Andromeda galaxy and known for decades, yet no one had checked it out in detail. It shows how the universe still has many surprises for us to discover,” said Romanowsky.

• Related ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ News story: Keck astronomer awarded Nobel Prize for trailblazing black hole research, October 8, 2020

A globular cluster is a large, dense collection of thousands to millions of ancient stars that move together as a tight-knit group through a galaxy. Astronomers found the cluster is extremely deficient in magnesium and has the lowest metal content ever seen in a globular star cluster. On average, RBC EXT8 has 800 times less iron than the Sun and is three times more iron-poor than the previous globular cluster record-holder.

In the future, researchers hope to find more “metal-lite” globular clusters and solve the mystery about their origin. For more on RBC EXT8, read the full story on the .

A key molecular building block in phosphorus chemistry has been elusive, until now. University of Hawaiʻi at ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹ researchers have discovered a simple and versatile way to identify the Hückel aromatic cyclotriphosphazene molecule along with its isomer (which has the same molecular formula, but differs structurally).

According to the research team and authors—¶«¾«Ó°Òµ ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹ Professor Ralf I. Kaiser, postdoctoral fellow Cheng Zhu, visiting researcher André K. Eckhardt, postdoctoral fellow Alexandre Bergantini, postdoctoral fellow Santosh K. Singh and Professor Peter R. Schreiner from Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany— represents fundamental chemistry research on chemical bonding and molecular structure. It highlights the differences and similarities between aromatic inorganic and organic compounds.

Researchers said dendrimers (repetitively branched molecules) based on the cyclotriphosphazene molecule detected in this study can be used in nanomaterials, biomolecule carriers, chemical sensors, antibacterial agents, reusable catalysts and medical imaging agents.

Key discovery

Kaiser and Zhu outlined that the cyclotriphosphazene molecule and its Dewar-benzene-type isomer were prepared within low temperature matrices of ammonia and phosphine ices exposed to ionizing radiation. Using ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹ advanced photoionization, mass spectrometric devices, both species were identified, observed and analyzed. This cannot be achieved currently with traditional synthetic techniques.

“The finding helps to understand the electronic structure and chemical bonding of exotic inorganic molecules and how they relate to their classical organic counterparts,” Zhu said.

Next steps

Kaiser and Zhu said they are planning to identify more exotic isomers such as high energy density, hexaatomic prismatic molecules containing phosphorus and nitrogen. Researchers said these have been predicted computationally, but have not yet been detected experimentally.

—By Marc Arakaki

New evidence shows the first-ever pictures capturing the birth of a pair of planets orbiting the star PDS 70 are in fact authentic.

Astronomers from the University of Hawaiʻi were part of a Caltech-led team that used a new infrared pyramid wavefront sensor for adaptive optics (AO) correction at on Maunakea. The team applied a new method of taking family photos of the baby planets (a.k.a. “protoplanets”) and confirmed their existence.

The team’s results were recently published in .

PDS 70 is the first known multi-planetary system where astronomers can witness planet formation in action. The first direct image of one of its planets, PDS 70b, was taken in 2018 and followed by multiple images taken at different wavelengths of its sibling, PDS 70c, in 2019. Both Jupiter-like protoplanets were discovered by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

“How planets form is one of the great mysteries in modern astronomy, and the baby planets around PDS 70 are really exciting objects to help figure this out,” said ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ astronomer Michael Liu, a co-author of the study.

AO is a technique used to remove the atmospheric blurring that distorts astronomical images. With the new infrared pyramid wavefront sensor and real-time controller installed, Keck Observatory’s AO system is able to deliver sharper, more detailed images. The infrared pyramid wavefront sensor was built by ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ astronomers Charlotte Bond and Mark Chun working in collaboration with Caltech astronomers. Bond and Chun also co-authored the study.

According to engineers at Keck Observatory, the new infrared detector technology dramatically improves the ability to study exoplanets and will also allow researchers to improve the quality of AO correction for harder to image targets located in the center of our galaxy.

A alumnus received a prestigious astrochemistry honor.

Andrew Turner, a 2018 PhD graduate in and current W.M. Keck Laboratory in Astrochemistry assistant director, was selected as the astrochemistry outstanding doctoral dissertation award winner, presented annually by the (ACS). The honor includes a $500 prize and an opportunity to present at the spring 2021 national ACS astrochemistry symposium.

“I have seen the work of previous dissertation award winners and knew the high quality and impact of their research, and after the initial surprise, I was honored that the American Chemical Society believes my research rises to their level,” Turner said.

Turner’s dissertation focused on the biological origin of the element phosphorus. He noted that alkyl phosphonic acids were discovered in the Murchison meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969, and said these acids may have been an early source of phosphorus. Turner’s research looked at the formation of these acids in interstellar ice by creating ices of phosphine, water and methane under low pressures and temperatures of -450 degrees Fahrenheit. Experiments involved subjecting these ices to ionizing radiation and they provided evidence that these molecules could be formed in interstellar clouds.

“This award shows very clearly the excellence in physical chemistry research being conducted at the of the University of Hawaiʻi with (former) students such as Andrew receiving excellent research training and conducting cutting-edge graduate work on campus,” said ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹ Professor Ralf Kaiser, who is the W.M. Keck Laboratory in Astrochemistry director and served as Turner’s research advisor.

—By Marc Arakaki

The answer to “How did the first organisms on Earth incorporate the critical element phosphorus?” has been a quandary for researchers, but, physical chemists believe a meteoric visitor could be the critical link. Phosphorus is a key element for the molecules that compose all living organisms and helps form the backbone of DNA molecules, cell membranes (phospholipids), even bones and teeth. However, most phosphorus on Earth is bound in a state that does not allow for easy release or access. Modern organisms have evolved to extract the limited supplies of phosphorus in water.

¶«¾«Ó°Òµ ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹ physical chemists in collaboration with colleagues from France and Taiwan have suggested that alkyl phosphonic acids, which are the only known phosphorus-containing organic compounds of extraterrestrial origin and were delivered to Earth on the Murchison meteorite, could have been the early source of soluble organic phosphorus available for Earth’s first organisms.

Extraterrestrial ice and space debris

Using sophisticated laser-based detection techniques available at ¶«¾«Ó°Òµâ€™s to identify newly formed molecules. The researchers discovered alkylphosphonic acid can be produced in cold extraterrestrial ices that could eventually become incorporated into space debris such as meteorites and comets that fall to or impact on Earth. That path for the alkyl phosphonic acid then became available for the first life on Earth. This is a key discovery as it connects the prebiotic origin of the element phosphorus back billions of years to ice in deep space. “It also provides a critical component for understanding the origin of life,” collaborator Cornelia Meinert (University of Nice, France).

The research is outlined in “Origin of alkyl phosphonic acids in the interstellar medium” by former ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹ graduate students Andrew M. Turner and Matthew Abplanalp and postdoctoral fellows Alexandre Bergantini, Robert Frigge and Cheng Zhu, and ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹ chemistry Professor Ralf I. Kaiser, in the August 7, issue of Science Advances.

The researchers’ work investigates how alkyl phosphonic acids formed in icy space environments in deep space. They created extraterrestrial model ice using phosphine, water and methane—all molecules that have been detected in deep space—and subjected the ice to conditions that replicate the temperatures and energy exposures in cold molecular clouds.

Long ago, meteorites and other space material such as comet impact would have brought these alkyl phosphonic acids to Earth, making them available during the emergence of life on proto Earth. Perhaps these compounds were an intermediate step toward more complex biologically-relevant molecules that were created in the absence of life.

“The present experiments critically advance our understanding how the only organophosphorus molecules detected in meteorites this far can be formed in deep space, thus constraining the molecular complexity of alkylphosphonic acids synthesized in low temperature extraterrestrial ices,” said Turner.

Kaiser added, “The identification of alkylphosphonic acids in the present study suggests that even more complex phosphorus-bearing biorelevant molecules linked to the origin of life might be formed in interstellar ices.”

For the first time, a cross-disciplinary study has shown chemical, physical, and material evidence for water formation on the Moon. Two teams from the collaborated on the project: physical chemists at the ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ Mānoa Department of Chemistry’s W.M. Keck Research Laboratory in Astrochemistry and planetary scientists at the (HIGP).

Although recent discoveries by orbiting spacecraft such as the Lunar Prospector and the hard lander Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite suggest the existence of water ice at the poles the Moon, the origin of this water has remained uncertain. Lunar water represents one of the key requirements for permanent colonization of the Moon as a feedstock for fuel and energy generation (hydrogen, oxygen) and also as “drinking water.”

The breakthrough research is outlined in lead-authored by ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ Mānoa postdoctoral fellow Cheng Zhu and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Chemistry Professor Ralf I. Kaiser and HIGP’s Jeffrey Gillis-Davis designed the experiments to test the synergy between hydrogen protons from , lunar minerals and micrometeorite impacts. Zhu irradiated samples of olivine, a dry mineral that serves as a surrogate of lunar material, with deuterium ions as a proxy for solar wind protons.

Deuterium irradiated only “experiments did not reveal any trace of water formation, even after increasing the temperature to lunar mid-latitude daytime temperatures,” Zhu explained. “But when we warmed the sample, we detected molecular deuterium, suggesting that deuterium—or hydrogen—implanted from the solar wind can be stored in the lunar rock.”

Kaiser added, “Therefore, another high-energy source might be necessary to trigger water formation within the Moon’s minerals followed by its release as a gas that can be detected.”

The second set of deuterium irradiation experiments was followed by laser heating to simulate the thermal effects of micrometeorite impacts. A burst of ions with mass-to-charge ratios matching that of singly ionized heavy water was observed in the gas phase during the laser pulses. “Water continued to be produced during laser pulses after the temperature was increased, suggesting that the olivine was storing precursors to heavy water that were released by laser heating,” said Zhu.

To image these processes and interpret the broader impact on the Moon and other bodies, HIGP’s Hope Ishii and John Bradley used focused ion beam–scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy in the . They observed sub-micrometer-sized surface pits, some partially covered by lids, suggesting that water vapor builds up under the surface in vesicles until they burst, releasing water from lunar silicates upon micrometeorite impact.

“Overall, this study advances our understanding on the origin of water as detected on the Moon and other airless bodies in our Solar System such as Mercury and asteroids and provides, for the first time, a scientifically sound and proven mechanism of water formation,” HIGP’s Gillis-Davis concluded.

All living beings need cells and energy to replicate. Without these fundamental building blocks, living organisms on Earth would not be able to reproduce and would simply not exist.

Little was known about a key element in the building blocks, phosphates, until now. researchers, in collaboration with colleagues in France and Taiwan, provide compelling new evidence that this component for life was found to be generated in outer space and delivered to Earth in its first one billion years by meteorites or comets. The phosphorus compounds were then incorporated in biomolecules found in cells in living beings on Earth.

The breakthrough research is outlined in authored by ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹ graduate student Andrew Turner, now assistant professor at the University of Pikeville, and ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹ Professor , in the September issue of .

According to the study, phosphates and diphosphoric acid are two major elements that are essential for these building blocks in molecular biology. They are the main constituents of chromosomes, the carriers of genetic information in which DNA is found. Together with phospholipids in cell membranes and adenosine triphosphate, which function as energy carriers in cells, they form self-replicating material present in all living organisms.

Replicating interstellar conditions

In an ultra-high vacuum chamber cooled down to 5 K (-450℉) in the at ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹, the Hawaiʻi team replicated interstellar icy grains coated with carbon dioxide and water, which are ubiquitous in cold molecular clouds, and phosphine. When exposed to ionizing radiation in the form of high-energy electrons to simulate the cosmic rays in space, multiple phosphorus oxoacids like phosphoric acid and diphosphoric acid were synthesized via non-equilibrium reactions.

“On Earth, phosphine is lethal to living beings,” said Turner, lead author. “But in the interstellar medium, an exotic phosphine chemistry can promote rare chemical reaction pathways to initiate the formation of biorelevant molecules such as oxoacids of phosphorus, which eventually might spark the molecular evolution of life as we know it.”

Kaiser added, “The phosphorus oxoacids detected in our experiments by combination of sophisticated analytics involving lasers, coupled to mass spectrometers along with gas chromatographs, might have also been formed within the ices of comets such as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which contains a phosphorus source believed to derive from phosphine.” Kaiser says these techniques can also be used to detect trace amounts of explosives and drugs.

“Since comets contain at least partially the remnants of the material of the protoplanetary disk that formed our solar system, these compounds might be traced back to the interstellar medium wherever sufficient phosphine in interstellar ices is available,” said Cornelia Meinert of the University of Nice (France).

Upon delivery to Earth by meteorites or comets, these phosphorus oxoacids might have been available for Earth’s prebiotic phosphorus chemistry. Hence an understanding of the facile synthesis of these oxoacids is essential to untangle the origin of water-soluble prebiotic phosphorus compounds and how they might have been incorporated into organisms not only on Earth, but potentially in our universe as well.

Turner and Kaiser worked with Meinert and Agnes Chang of National Dong Hwa University (Taiwan) on this project.

Physical Chemist Ralf I. Kaiser has been elected to the of the (ACS) for his outstanding contributions to science and the profession, and for his equally exemplary service to ACS.

Kaiser is one of 65 members who will be inducted at the ACS National Meeting on August 21 during the Society’s 254th National Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C.

Kaiser pioneered the use of molecular beams to investigate chemical reactions in the gas and condensed phase that lead to the complex molecules observed by astronomers throughout the universe. He is also the founder and driving force for the astrochemistry subdivision that established this emerging field in the ACS portfolio and assisted with raising funds for the ACS Astrochemistry Dissertation Award.

A professor in the at ¶«¾«Ó°Òµ ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹, Kaiser and his research team explore the astrochemical and astrobiological evolution of the universe at the molecular level by exploiting sophisticated reaction dynamics and laser tools. Kaiser’s results are crucial to understanding various aspects of more earthly chemical processes in combustion chemistry such as the formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons—carcinogenic pollutants emitted from combustion engines—and of material sciences in extreme environments.

Kaiser directs the , an international research facility that houses some of the most advanced astrochemistry research equipment in the world.

“Astrochemistry explores new frontiers in the chemistry in extraterrestrial, extreme environments on the microscopic level and discovers new, often unexpected concepts of the reactivity of atoms and molecules,” Kaiser said. “An understanding of the synthesis of biorelevant molecules in deep space and of our molecular Origins requires state-of-the art experimental setups operated by exceptional students and postdoctoral fellows in tandem with internationally competitive infrastructure to support them.”

More on Ralf Kaiser

Kaiser was awarded the in 2007 in recognition of his scholarly contributions. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (2005), the Royal Society of Chemistry (2011), the American Physical Society (2012), American Association for the Advancement of Science (2013) and the Institute of Physics (UK) (2014). Kaiser has published more than 380 articles in international peer-reviewed journals.

He received his PhD in chemistry from the University of Münster and Nuclear Research Center in Jülich, Germany, was a postdoctoral fellow in physical chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and conducted his habilitation in physics in Germany.

More on the American Chemical Society

With close to 157,000 members, the American Chemical Society is the world’s largest scientific society and global leader in providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature. The ACS Fellows Program, established in 2008, is one component of the broader ACS Awards Program.

Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Chemistry’s , along with colleagues at the universities of Virginia and Southern California, have provided conclusive evidence about complex organic molecules: formation of these key molecules, relevant to the origin of Earth’s living organisms such as aldehydes and ketones, is driven by a cosmic-ray-triggered nonequilibrium chemistry deep within interstellar ices at temperatures as low as 5 Kelvin (-450°F). The evidence was based on laboratory experiments, computations and modeling.

The newly published research paper, “,” was authored by graduate student and Professor in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This article has already gained recognition in the United Kingdom as well as from the journal Nature.

“On Earth, cosmic ray exposure is deadly to humans since the radiation can lead to the degradation of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is a molecule carrying the genetic instructions used in the growth, development, functioning and replication of all known living beings,“ said Abplanalp. “But in deep space, cosmic rays drive unique chemical reaction pathways to actually initiate the formation of biorelevant molecules, which eventually might jumpstart the molecular evolution of life as we know it.”

In an ultra-high vacuum chamber cooled down to 5 Kelvin, the Hawaiʻi team simulated icy grains coated with carbon monoxide and methane/ethane. When exposed to high-energy electrons, to mimic the cosmic rays in space, aldehydes and energetically unfavorable enols are synthesized in exotic nonequilibrium reactions. This work challenges a conventional wisdom that a higher temperature is necessary to recombine reactive radicals, whereas the present findings reveal explicitly that those organics can be formed at ultra-low temperatures.

These processes are crucial in starting the chain of chemical reactions that lead to the formation of biorelevant molecular precursors in space and will assist in the understanding of the origin as well as the evolution of the molecular universe.