Other
Scientific paper
Sep 1992
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992adspr..12r..33o&link_type=abstract
Advances in Space Research, Vol. 12, No. 4, p. 33 - 41
Other
Scientific paper
In spite of all the uncertainties involved in the current descriptions of the Earth's formation and on the physical and chemical characteristics of the environment in which life emerged more than 3.5×109 years ago, it is generally agreed that cometary nuclei and other primitive, volatile-rich minor bodies supplied our planet with considerable amounts of biogenic elements (C, H, N, O, P, S). While it is unlikely that the infalling cometary nuclei carried with them a seminal component of unknown nature without which terrestrial life could not have originated, cometary collisions probably represented not only a significant source of volatiles but also an important free energy source. It has been argued that under some circumstances, cometary organic compounds may have survived the high temperature regime created during a collision with the primitive Earth. Moreover, the presence of simple carbon-bearing molecules and radicals in the solar atmosphere and in circumstellar shells around carbon-rich stars suggests that CO, C2, H2O and other compounds were not pyrolyzed during the cometary collisions, but became the starting point for abiotic synthesis of molecules of biochemical significance.
Lazcano Antoni
Mills T.
Oro Judit
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