Microscopic Chondritic Chemical Reactors

Abstract

Maurette (1998a and 1998b) gives a more detailed discussion of previous works supporting the role of unmelted micrometeorites in prebiotic chemistry. Krueger and Kissel (1987) quoted thermodynamic computations suggesting that the μm-size C-rich grains that they discovered in the tail of Halley’s comet with their time-of-flight mass spectrometer on board the Vega spacecraft, when added to a prebiotic soup of organics, could trigger the formation of nucleic acids. Anders (1989) relied on the characteristics of the tiny stratospheric micrometeorites with sizes of about 5–15 μm, which amount to less than about 1% of the micrometeorite mass flux, to argue that micrometeorites played a major role in the delivery of organics to the Earth. As first quoted by Ponchelet (1989), we proposed in 1989 that much larger micrometeorites, similar to Antarctic micrometeorites, might have been functioning as individual microscopic chemical reactors on the early Earth during their interactions with gases and waters (Maurette et al., 1990, 1991b, 1998a, 1998b). Subsequently, Chyba and Sagan (1992) ceased fully supporting the role of the direct impact of comets in the delivery of such organics, and started to refer that of micrometeorites.