Rethinking Earth's Early Atmosphere

@article{Chyba2005RethinkingEE,
  title={Rethinking Earth's Early Atmosphere},
  author={Christopher F. Chyba},
  journal={Science},
  year={2005},
  volume={308},
  pages={962 - 963}
}
  • C. Chyba
  • Published 13 May 2005
  • Environmental Science
  • Science
More than 50 years ago, Miller performed his groundbreaking experiments that showed that an atmosphere containing methane and ammonia could yield amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Today, many authors favor a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, but such an atmosphere is much less suitable for producing organic molecules. In his Perspective, Chyba highlights the report by Tian et al ., who propose instead that the early atmosphere was carbon dioxide--based but may have contained many… 
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23 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
2
Background Citations
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23 Citations

Prebiotic materials from on and off the early Earth
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    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
  • 2006
One of the greatest puzzles of all time is how did life arise? It has been universally presumed that life arose in a soup rich in carbon compounds, but from where did these organic molecules come? In…
Prebiotic chemistry: chemical evolution of organics on the primitive Earth under simulated prebiotic conditions.
A series of prebiotic mixtures of simple molecules, sources of C, H, N, and O, were examined under conditions that may have prevailed during the Hadean eon (4.6-3.8 billion years), namely an…
Pre-biotic organic synthesis: laboratory simulation experiments and their significance for the origin of life in the solar system
  • M. Engel
  • Environmental Science
    Optical Engineering + Applications
  • 2011
It is commonly assumed that the origin of life on Earth and perhaps elsewhere in the solar system was preceded by the synthesis and accumulation of organic compounds essential for life as we know it…
Hydrogen cyanide polymers, comets and the origin of life.
TLDR
The continuing investigations suggest that HCN polymers are a plausible link between cosmochemistry and the origin of informational macromolecules, and are basically of two types: ladder structures with conjugated -C=N- bonds and polyamidines readily converted by water to polypeptides.
Atmospheric Escape and Evolution of Terrestrial Planets and Satellites
The origin and evolution of Venus’, Earth’s, Mars’ and Titan’s atmospheres are discussed from the time when the active young Sun arrived at the Zero-Age-Main-Sequence. We show that the high EUV flux…
A reexamination of the Sudbury landing
Laboratory simulation of UV irradiation from the Sun on amino acids. I: irradiation of tyrosine
Abstract The effects of ultraviolet (UV) irradiation on water solutions of tyrosine (HO—C6H4—CH2—CHNH2—COOH) have been investigated using a Xe lamp in the region 200–800 nm. This is a step in…
5. Prebiotic Chemistry – Biochemistry – Emergence of Life (4.4–2 Ga)
TLDR
The attempts to devise plausible scenarios accounting for the emergence of the main molecular devices and processes found in biology are presented including the role of nucleotides at early stages (RNA world).
Radiation resistance in thermophiles: mechanisms and applications
TLDR
A picture of radiation resistance thermophiles, their adaptive mechanisms to evade stress viz., radiation and desiccation, their present applications along with new horizons in near future are delineated.
Chemical Evolution of Simple Amino Acids to Asparagine under Discharge onto the Primitive Hydrosphere: Simulation Experiments Using Contact Glow Discharge
Asparagine is an important amino acid for abiotic polypeptide synthesis. In simulation experiments, it was obtained in 3.0% yield (based on the amount of consumed alanine) from alanine (100 mM) and...
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References

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