Related papers: Possible Ribose Synthesis in Carbonaceous Planetes…
Chondrites are the likely building blocks of Earth, and identifying the group of chondrite that best represents Earth is a key to resolving the state of the early Earth. The origin of chondrites, however, remains controversial partly…
Chondrules are one of the most primitive elements that can serve as a fundamental clue as to the origin of our Solar system. We investigate a formation scenario of chondrules that involves planetesimal collisions and the resultant impact…
The origin of fatty acids on the prebiotic Earth is important as they likely formed the encapsulating membranes of the first protocells. Carbon-rich meteorites (i.e., carbonaceous chondrites) such as Murchison and Tagish Lake are well known…
One of the most interesting unsolved questions in science today is the question of life on other planets. At the present time it is safe to say that we do not have much of an idea as to whether life is common or exceedingly rare in the…
For more than 3.5 billion years, life experienced dramatic environmental extremes on Earth. These include shifts from oxygen-less to over-oxygenated atmospheres and cycling between hothouse conditions and global glaciations. Meanwhile, an…
The Earth appears non-chondritic in its abundances of refractory lithophile elements, posing a significant problem for our understanding of its formation and evolution. It has been suggested that this non-chondritic composition may be…
Conceptualizing planetary habitability depends on understanding how living organisms originated and what features of environments are essential to foster abiogenesis. Estimates of the abundance of life's building blocks are confounded by…
Implicit in the RNA world hypothesis is that prebiotic RNA synthesis, despite occurring in an environment without biochemical catalysts, produced the long RNA polymers which are essential to the formation of life. In order to investigate…
Since the Hadean era of Earth's history, peptides/proteins and RNA have undergone a complex evolutionary trajectory. Originating from simple monomeric units, these molecules evolved abiotically under various biochemical and biophysical…
The early start to life naively suggests that abiogenesis is a rapid process on Earth-like planets. However, if evolution typically takes ~4Gyr to produce intelligent life-forms like us, then the limited lifespan of Earth's biosphere…
Most models of volatile delivery to accreting terrestrial planets assume that the carriers for water are similar in water content to the carbonaceous chondrites in our Solar System. Here we suggest that the water content of primitive bodies…
A recent suggestion that acetamide, \ce{CH3C(O)NH2}, could be readily formed on water-ice grains by the acid induced addition of water across the \ce{CN} bond is now shown to be valid. Computational modelling of the reaction between…
Chondrules probably formed during a small window of time $\sim$1-4 Ma after CAIs, when most solid matter in the asteroid belt was already in the form of km-sized planetesimals. They are unlikely, therefore, to be ``building blocks" of…
We propose a simple and efficient pathway for the formation of precursors to core nucleobases in DNA and RNA using a suite of computational chemistry methods. Benzene, which is thermochemically stable in N2- or CO2-dominated atmospheres,…
Understanding the thermodynamic function of life may shed light on its origin. Life, as are all irreversible processes, is contingent on entropy production. Entropy production is a measure of the rate of the tendency of Nature to explore…
The dominant paradigm in origin of life research is that of an RNA world. However, despite experimental progress towards the spontaneous formation of RNA, the RNA world hypothesis still has its problems. Here, we introduce a novel…
Explaining the origin of life requires us to explain how self-replication arises. To be specific, how can a self-replicating entity develop spontaneously from a chemical reaction system in which no reaction is self-replicating? Previously…
An origin of Earth life on Mars would resolve significant inconsistencies between the inferred history of life and Earth's geologic history. Life as we know it utilizes amino acids, nucleic acids, and lipids for the metabolic,…
Carbonaceous chondrites are often considered potential contributors of water and other volatiles to terrestrial planets as most of them contain significant amounts of hydrous mineral phases. As such, carbonaceous chondrites are candidate…
The planetary building blocks that formed in the terrestrial planet region were likely very dry, yet water is comparatively abundant on Earth. We review the various mechanisms proposed for the origin of water on the terrestrial planets.…