The Journey of Astrophysical Ices: From Interstellar Ice Grains to Present-Day Comets

Our understanding of the Universe in general, our galaxy and our solar system in particular, has been significantly improved due to several NASA in-situ and remote-sensing missions in the past decades. At the same time, the astrophysical and planetary data requires laboratory experimental and theoretical simulations (so called ground-truth) in order to understand the underlying mechanisms and explain the observed phenomena. Towards this objective, our "Ice Spectroscopy Laboratory, ISL" at JPL has undertaken projects and obtained insight into the physics and chemistry of solar system and interstellar ice, including formation of molecular building blocks of life, phase-transitions, radiation processing, ionization in ice, etc. Many, if not all these research works were first of their kind that not only provided deeper understanding, but also questioned conventional wisdom oftentimes. My talk will go deep into the experimental and theoretical aspects of evolution of ice and organics in the colder regions of the universe.