Experimental Investigations into Astrophysically Relevant Ionic Reactions

摘要

There is not a single Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded to an extraterrestrial chemical discovery. This is in sharp contrast to the Nobel Prizes in physics, where about 10 prizes have been awarded based on discoveries of extraterrestrial phenomena within the field of physics, the first being the 1936 physics prize to V. F. Hess "for his discovery of cosmic radiation" (for historical reasons it is called "cosmic radiation" or "cosmic rays" because it was initially thought to be electromagnetic radiation; now we know that the main component is protons) and no less than three prizes awarded in the 21st century (2002, 2006, and 2011). Whereas the Universe has provided the earth-bound physicists with discoveries of sufficient importance to motivate a Nobel Prize, it has failed to do likewise to the chemists. Nevertheless, the serendipitous discovery of fullerenes was arguably inspired~1 by observations by means of radio astronomy of interstellar carbon chain molecules,~(2?4) although the opposite view has been advanced by one of the discoverers.~5