Prebiotic chemistry on Titan ? The nature of Titan's aerosols and their potential evolution at the satellite surface

Details Prebiotic chemistry on Titan ? The nature of Titan's aerosols and their potential evolution at the satellite surface Prebiotic chemistry on Titan ? The nature of Titan's aerosols and their potential evolution at the satellite surface

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufm.p31c1551c&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #P31C-1551

Biology

[5215] Planetary Sciences: Astrobiology / Origin Of Life, [5225] Planetary Sciences: Astrobiology / Early Environment Of Earth, [6207] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Comparative Planetology, [6281] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Titan

Scientific paper

How may Titan's aerosols interact with Titan's surface after settling down in the atmosphere ? Could they play the role of bio-precursors ? A laboratory study based on the chemical transformation that Titan’s aerosol analogues suffer when placed under putative surface conditions of the satellite was performed. In order to understand the role that aqueous ammonia may play on the chemical transformation of atmospheric aerosols once they reach the surface, we synthesized laboratory analogues of Titan’s aerosols from a N2:CH4 (98:2) mixture irradiated at low temperatures under a continuous flow regime by a cold plasma discharge of 180 W. The analogues were recovered, partitioned in several 10.0 mg samples and placed inside different ammonia concentrations during 10 weeks at temperatures as low as those reported for Titan’s surface. After a derivatization process performed to the aerosols’ refractory phase with MTBSTFA in DMF, the products were identified and quantified using a GC-MS system. We found derived residues related to amino acids as well as urea. Our results have important astrobiological implications to Titan’s environment particularly if the existence of the suggested subsurface water-ammonia mixture and its deposition on the satellite’s surface is validated. This paper will also deal with more general discussions : we will especially emphasize what we learn about Titan’s aerosol nature from Space Exploration (especially ACP experiment onboard Huygens probe) and more globally on aerosol fate in Titan’s environment, and what we learn about Titan’s aerosol nature from laboratory studies (characterization of aerosol analogues, aka tholins) Illustration of the chemical evolution of Titan’s tholins in NH4OH neutralizing solution : depending of the group nature (-R) of some tholins components the name of the resulting amino-acid obtained after NH4OH hydrolysis is listed at the bottom of the figure.

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