ALMA detection and astrobiological potential of vinyl cyanide on Titan

2017/07/07 by Maureen Palmer, Martin Cordiner, C. A. Nixon +5 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies

paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/sciadv.1700022

openalex publication_date 2017/07/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22

Abstract

We have discovered vinyl cyanide—a molecule that may be able to form cell-like membranes in lakes of hydrocarbon—on Titan.

Citations

• The NEMESIS planetary atmosphere radiative transfer and retrieval tool
• Membrane alternatives in worlds without oxygen: Creation of an azotosome
• Constraints on Titan's middle atmosphere ammonia abundance from Herschel/SPIRE sub-millimetre spectra
• The Lakes and Seas of Titan

Cited by

• The Emergence of Life
• Can polarity-inverted membranes self-assemble on Titan?
• Nitrogen heterocycles form peptide nucleic acid precursors in complex prebiotic mixtures
• Digging into the Massive Protostar S255IR NIRS3: A Study of Nitrogen-Bearing Molecules and Their Prebiotic Chemistry
• Hypothetical types of biochemistry [wikipedia]

Related

• ALMA detection of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in the atmosphere of Saturn
• The Fate of Simple Organics on Titan's Surface: A Theoretical Perspective
• Titan as an analog of Earth’s past and future
• The Development of a Probalistic Model for Tholin Aggregation in Titan's Atmosphere
• ¹³C isotopic ratios of HC₃N on Titan measured with ALMA