Vol. 588
In section 6. Interstellar and circumstellar matter

About the detection of urea in the interstellar medium: The energetic aspect

Detecting complex organic molecules is always difficult, but some important species whose presence illustrates critical pathways in chemical networks are particularly difficult because of the lack of laboratory data. Urea is one of these, because it is a heavy, complex organic molecule whose presence is predicted by astrochemical models. But its structure and spectrum are poorly understood. The authors use molecular dynamics and quantum chemical computations to produce a systematic model and to predict its structure and function.