Comets: production mechanisms of hydroxyl and hydrogen halos.

The brightness dependence on the heliocentric distance that has been observed for the hydrogen and the hydroxyl halos of comet 1969g can be quantitatively explained by a three-step process: the vaporization of the water snows, the photodissociation of the water molecule into the ground states of hydrogen and hydroxyl, and the photoexcitation of hydrogen and hydroxyl by a fluorescence mechanism.

Superdense water ice.

A new allotropic form of water ice with a density of 2.32 +/- 0.15 grams per cubic centimeter has been observed at very low pressures and for temperatures lower than 100 degrees K. It is most likely amorphous.

Cometary origin of carbon and water on the terrestrial planets.

An early high-temperature phase of the protosolar accretion disk is implied by at least three different telltales in chondrites and confirmed by peculiarities in the dust grains of comet Halley. The existence this high-temperature phase implies a large accretion rate hence a massive early disk. This clarifies the origin of the Kuiper Belt and of the Oort cloud, those two cometary populations of different symmetry that subsist today. Later, when the dust sedimented and was removed from the thermal equilibrium with the gas phase, a somewhat lower temperature of the disk explains the future planets' densities as well as the location beyond 2.6 AU of the carbonaceous chondrite chemistry. This lower temperature remains however large enough to require an exogenous origin for all carbon and all water now present in the Earth. The later orbital diffusion of planetesimals, which is required by protoplanelary growth, is needed to explain the origin of the terrestrial biosphere (atmosphere, oceans, carbonates and organic compounds) by a veneer mostly made of comets.

Cometary origin of the biosphere: a progress report.

Empirical evidence of the accretion temperature for undifferentiated meteorites coming from the asteroid belt, combined with any reasonable temperature gradient extending from the asteroid belt to the Earth's zone, suggests that the Earth accreted from very hot dust grains that were degassed from all volatile elements and depleted in labile compounds. Isotopic evidence from the atmospheric noble gases also shows that no primary atmosphere has survived on the Earth. The only possible source for the atmosphere and the oceans is therefore the cometary bombardment that is predicted as the inescapable consequence of the formation of the giant planets. This implies that comets are the only source of organic carbon, nitrogen and water, hence of the total biosphere of the Earth.

Pristine nature of comets as revealed by their UV spectrum.

The observation of the VUV spectrum of comets from rockets and satellites has brought to light some new clues on those primitive bodies that could be the link between interstellar molecules and early planetary atmospheres as well as the bridge between stellar and planetary astrophysics.