IMPRS Summer School 2022 - Astronomy, astrochemistry & the origin of life

The Origin of Life on Earth is one of the most fascinating questions arising from the studies of our planet, and of the wider Universe. There are two main hypotheses describing the source of the organic compounds that could have served as the basis of abiogenesis: (1) the in situ synthesis of prebiotic molecules on the primitive Earth and (2) their formation in the Solar Nebula or in its parent molecular cloud, followed by their exogenous delivery onto Earth via asteroids, comets, and their smaller fragments.

The school will be devoted to the exogenous hypothesis leading to the origin of life. We will discuss how astronomy and theoretical and experimental astrochemistry act together to explore this hypothesis, and to go beyond our Solar System in the search for extraterrestrial life and other habitable planets.