The chemistry of planet-forming regions is not interstellar.

Advances in infrared and submillimeter technology have allowed for detailed observations of the molecular content of the planet-forming regions of protoplanetary disks. In particular, disks around solar-type stars now have growing molecular inventories that can be directly compared with both prestellar chemistry and that inferred for the early solar nebula. The data directly address the old question of whether the chemistry of planet-forming matter is similar or different and unique relative to the chemistry of dense clouds and protostellar envelopes. The answer to this question may have profound consequences for the structure and composition of planetary systems. The practical challenge is that observations of emission lines from disks do not easily translate into chemical concentrations. Here, we present a two-dimensional radiative transfer model of RNO 90, a classical protoplanetary disk around a solar-mass star, and retrieve the concentrations of dominant molecular carriers of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen in the terrestrial region around 1 AU. We compare our results to the chemical inventory of dense clouds and protostellar envelopes, and argue that inner disk chemistry is, as expected, fundamentally different from prestellar chemistry. We find that the clearest discriminant may be the concentration of CO2, which is extremely low in disks, but one of the most abundant constituents of dense clouds and protostellar envelopes.

An old disk still capable of forming a planetary system.

From the masses of the planets orbiting the Sun, and the abundance of elements relative to hydrogen, it is estimated that when the Solar System formed, the circumstellar disk must have had a minimum mass of around 0.01 solar masses within about 100 astronomical units of the star. (One astronomical unit is the Earth-Sun distance.) The main constituent of the disk, gaseous molecular hydrogen, does not efficiently emit radiation from the disk mass reservoir, and so the most common measure of the disk mass is dust thermal emission and lines of gaseous carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide emission generally indicates properties of the disk surface, and the conversion from dust emission to gas mass requires knowledge of the grain properties and the gas-to-dust mass ratio, which probably differ from their interstellar values. As a result, mass estimates vary by orders of magnitude, as exemplified by the relatively old (3-10 million years) star TW Hydrae, for which the range is 0.0005-0.06 solar masses. Here we report the detection of the fundamental rotational transition of hydrogen deuteride from the direction of TW Hydrae. Hydrogen deuteride is a good tracer of disk gas because it follows the distribution of molecular hydrogen and its emission is sensitive to the total mass. The detection of hydrogen deuteride, combined with existing observations and detailed models, implies a disk mass of more than 0.05 solar masses, which is enough to form a planetary system like our own.