Abstract

Chemical reactions on interstellar dust grains play a crucial role in interstellar chemistry by promoting the formation of organic products. While many of the reaction rates are poorly understood and molecular formation routes are difficult to isolate in the laboratory, computer simulations of these reactions allows us to better understand the nature and evolution of interstellar molecules in molecular clouds. The work presented here is part of the CASS 2006 initiative which aimed to involve graduate students from diverse regions of science into the field of Astrobiology. This particular collaboration resulted in the development of computational software that implements a MCMC stochastic model of the surface chemistry. While the current model only simulates grain-surface chemistry, we show the capabilities and vast potential of coupling the grain-surface with a full-scale interstellar gas chemistry model. We have improved upon the original IDL model by implementing a Java based product that provides numerous options for set-up and tuning of simulations along with real-time visualization of the model results.