[meteorite-list] Poison Key to Early Life

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:48:07 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201104292348.p3TNm743009291_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://news.discovery.com/space/life-poison-earth-organics-110425.html

Poison Key to Early Life

How did Earth manage to hold onto its organics after being
slammed by a Mars-sized object 4.4 billion years ago?

By Irene Klotz
Discovery News
April 25, 2011

    * Formaldehyde may be the delivery mechanism for organics on Earth
      -- and throughout the solar system.
    * The finding is ironic since formaldehyde is poison to life as we
      know it.
    * The discovery stems from analysis of samples from NASA's Stardust
      comet probe.

How baby Earth managed to keep hold of its organic matter after the
clubbing it took by a Mars-sized object roughly 4.4 billion years ago
has long puzzled scientists.

The throttling was so severe scientists believe Earth melted. Splatters
that ended up in space eventually came together to form the moon.
Lightweight materials, like water and carbon, would have vaporized. How
then did the building blocks for life manage to survive?

Scientists think they have found the answer: The organics were locked in
stable chains formed from formaldehyde, an ironic finding considering
that formaldehyde ended up being poisonous to the very life it may have
made possible.

"Formaldehyde is very interesting, very reactive. It can even react with
itself and form complex polymers," George Cody, a senior scientist at
the Carnegie Institution of Washington, told Discovery News.

Formaldehyde also is plentiful in molecular clouds in space, meaning
ample quantities would have been around for incorporation into the solar
system's population.

Two chains of evidence support this theory. First, organic solids have
been found in meteorites and in comets. A sample from NASA's Stardust
comet mission gave Cody and colleagues a sign they were on the right path.

"It was about the most chemically complex material I had ever seen in my
life," Cody said.

Scientists then turned to lab work to reproduce the type of organic
matter found in carbonaceous chondrites, a type of organic-rich
meteorite, from formaldehyde. They found their formaldehyde-synthesized
material was similar to what has been found in carbonaceous chondrites
and from Comet Wild 2, which was sampled by NASA's Stardust probe.

The experiments also showed the organics would survive temperatures of
up to 1,400 Centigrade (2,552 degrees Fahrenheit).

"The formaldehyde forms these little tiny organic balls," Cody said.

Other molecules found in space, such as hydrogen cyanide, also could
polymerize with itself, but they fall apart in hot water, Cody added.

"Formaldehyde is almost unique in its tendency to hang out -- and hang
on -- as the solar system got hotter and dryer," said Cody.

Also buttressing the team's findings is a related study showing that
comets may be much more watery than previously thought.

"If liquid water environments were common, than there are a lot more
places to produce pre-biotic material," Dante Lauretta, associate
professor at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory,
told Discovery News.

"Now that we know what we're working with, we want to understand the
chemistry better," added Cody.

Cody's research was reported in the /Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences earlier this month. Lauretta's team, which also studied
Stardust samples, is publishing in the online edition of the journal
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
Received on Fri 29 Apr 2011 07:48:07 PM PDT