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arXiv · 1911.00769

Closing gaps to our origins. The UV window into the Universe

Ana I. Gomez de Castro·Martin A. Barstow·Fréderic Baudin·Stefano Benetti·Jean Claude Bouret·Noah Brosch·Domitilla de Martino·Giulio del Zanna·Chris Evans·Miriam García·Boris Gaensicke·Carolina Kehrig·Jon Lapington·Alain Lecavelier des Etangs·Giampiero Naletto·Yael Nazé·Coralie Neiner·Jonathan Nichols·Marina Orio·Isabella Pagano·Gregor Rauw·Steven Shore·Gagik Tovmasian·Asif ud-Doula·Kevin France·Lynne Hillenbrand
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Abstract

The investigation of the emergence of life is a major endeavour of science. Astronomy is contributing to it in three fundamental manners: (1) by measuring the chemical enrichment of the Universe, (2) by investigating planet formation and searching for exoplanets with signatures of life and, (3) by determining the abundance of aminoacids and the chemical routes to aminoacid and protein growth in astronomical bodies. This proposal deals with the first two. In the Voyage to 2050, the world-wide scientific community is getting equipped with large facilities for the investigation of the emergence of life in the Universe (i.e. VLT, JWST, ELT, GMT, TMT, ALMA, FAST, VLA, ATHENA, SKA) including the ESA's CHEOPS, PLATO and ARIEL missions. This white paper is a community effort to call for the development of a large ultraviolet optical observatory to gather fundamental data for this investigation that will not be accessible through other ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum. A versatile space observatory with UV sensitivity a factor of 50-100 greater than existing facilities will revolutionize our understanding of the pathway to life in the Universe.

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Ana I. Gomez de Castro, Martin A. Barstow, Fréderic Baudin, Stefano Benetti, Jean Claude Bouret, Noah Brosch, Domitilla de Martino, Giulio del Zanna, Chris Evans, Miriam García, Boris Gaensicke, Carolina Kehrig, Jon Lapington, Alain Lecavelier des Etangs, Giampiero Naletto, Yael Nazé, Coralie Neiner, Jonathan Nichols, Marina Orio, Isabella Pagano, Gregor Rauw, Steven Shore, Gagik Tovmasian, Asif ud-Doula, Kevin France, Lynne Hillenbrand. 2019-11-02. Closing gaps to our origins. The UV window into the Universe. https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.00769

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