Pre-biotic organic matter from comets and asteroids

Details Pre-biotic organic matter from comets and asteroids Pre-biotic organic matter from comets and asteroids

Nov 1989

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1989natur.342..255a&link_type=abstract

Nature, Volume 342, Issue 6247, pp. 255-257 (1989).

Mathematics

Logic

118

Scientific paper

SEVERAL authors1-3 have suggested that comets or carbonaceous asteroids contributed large amounts of organic matter to the primitive Earth, and thus possibly played a vital role in the origin of life. But organic matter cannot survive the extremely high temperatures (> 104 K) reached on impact, which atomize the projectile and break all chemical bonds. Only fragments small enough to be gently decelerated by the atmosphere-principally meteors of 10-12-10-6 g-can deliver their organic matter intact4. The amount of such 'soft-landed' organic carbon can be estimated from data for the infall rate of meteoritic matter. At present rates, only ~0.006 g cm-2 intact organic carbon would accumulate in 108 yr, but at the higher rates of ~4 x 109 yr ago, about 20 g cm-2 may have accumulated in the few hundred million years between the last cataclysmic impact and the beginning of life. It may have included some biologically important compounds that did not form by abiotic synthesis on Earth.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Pre-biotic organic matter from comets and asteroids does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Pre-biotic organic matter from comets and asteroids, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Pre-biotic organic matter from comets and asteroids will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1617183