Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 21st-23th September 2011
The earliest setting and evolution of planetary atmospheres of terrestrial planets is directly associated with accretion, chemical differentiation, outgassing, stochastic impacts, and extremely high energy fluxes from their host stars. Our present knowledge of the initial atmospheric composition of the Earth is scarce because we still have not identified paleosols older than 3.8 Gyrs. Despite of this, zircon grains suggest that liquid water, and probably other volatiles, were present on Earth’s surface about 4.3 Gyrs ago even that we initially imagined our early world marked by volcanic activity. This evidence is creating reasonable doubts about many related issues, e.g. has a magma ocean ever existed on Earth? What was the origin, and delivery period of volatiles? Current exoplanet research might provide additional clues on our understanding of the Earth transition from a hot accretionary phase to become a habitable world. Solar system planets have evolved with time to the present stage, and we loss part of this information during their evolutionary way. Clues on the first stages in planetary evolution can be obtained from new discoveries around other stars as the exoplanets can be in different evolutionary stages, and being the product of similar or different formation processes Nitrogen is also one of the atoms of life and its delicate balance with oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere conditions the habitability of the surface. Cyanhydric acid, methyl cyanide and nitric oxide play important roles in the chemical evolution of early life. They are also present in contemporary metabolisms. The biomarker character of nitrogen containing molecules in planetary systems will be also a theme of this meeting. Nitric oxide is also one of the main elements of the formation of the Earth’s ionosphere and thus participates together with the magnetic field to the habitability of the planet These are some of the main issues that motivate us to organize this workshop/, /but related topics are welcome to fit in this highly interdisciplinary environment/. The meeting is organized with the collaboration, and sponsorship of the European COST programme and the Scientific Secretariat of the Institute for Catalan Studies (IEC). The workshop will take place from 21 to 23 September, 2011 in the /Coromines/ conference room, inside the IEC historical building located in Carme street 47, nearby the famous Ramblas. A nice reception, and a poster session will take place at IEC historical cloister on Wednesday 21st. The workshop will be scheduled along three days, with two/one sessions per day, excepting Friday afternoon.