Space chemistries: An unlimited but tricky playground for theoretical chemists

Françoise Pauzat
Laboratoire de Chimie Théorique - UMR7616 UPMC & CNRS, Paris, France
Mercredi 22 Novembre 2017, 11h00
bibliothèque LCT, tour 12 - 13, 4^ème étage

Chemistries in space are at the same time specific and numerous. They are strongly dependent of the place you are looking at, now, as well as of the history of the species and systems concerned; which implies to take into account simultaneously chemistries in environments highly variable. To make things even more treachery, if possible, you have to remember that all the information you can get is indirect (deduced from observing the consequences) and in any case is not replicable. In brief, you have to model and calculate processes you don't even fully know the effects and consequences, in environments you have to imagine, at least partly. In such conditions, you have to be fully aware that the theoretical construction or re-construction of our world holds upright mostly by self-coherence.
The specificity of such a research will be illustrated by examples of yesterday, to-day and to-morrow astrochemical problems relevant to interstellar medium, planets and satellites of our solar system, and small bodies as comets.