Aqueous Alteration on Asteroids Simplifies Soluble Organic Matter Mixtures
Biologically relevant abiotic extraterrestrial soluble organic matter (SOM) has been widely investigated to study the origin of life and the chemical evolution of protoplanetary disks. Synthesis of biologically relevant organics, in particular, seems to require aqueous environments in the early sola...
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ftdatacite:10.48550/arxiv.2111.10004 2023-05-15T18:30:04+02:00 Aqueous Alteration on Asteroids Simplifies Soluble Organic Matter Mixtures Isa, Junko Orthous-Daunay, François-régis Beck, Pierre Herd, Christopher D. K. Vuitton, Veronique Flandinet, Laurène 2021 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2111.10004 https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.10004 unknown arXiv https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac2b34 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 CC-BY Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability physics.data-an FOS Physical sciences article-journal Article ScholarlyArticle Text 2021 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2111.10004 https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac2b34 2022-03-10T13:31:12Z Biologically relevant abiotic extraterrestrial soluble organic matter (SOM) has been widely investigated to study the origin of life and the chemical evolution of protoplanetary disks. Synthesis of biologically relevant organics, in particular, seems to require aqueous environments in the early solar system. However, SOM in primitive meteorites includes numerous chemical species besides the biologically relevant ones, and the reaction mechanisms that comprehensively explain the complex nature of SOM are unknown. Besides, the initial reactants, which formed before asteroid accretion, were uncharacterized. We examined the mass distribution of SOM extracted from three distinct Tagish Lake meteorite fragments, which exhibit different degrees of aqueous alteration though they originated from a single asteroid. We report that mass distributions of SOM in the primordial fragments are well fit by the SchulzZimm (SZ) model for the molecular weight distribution patterns found in chain growth polymerization experiments. Also, the distribution patterns diverge further from SZ with increasing degrees of aqueous alteration. These observations imply that the complex nature of the primordial SOM (1) was established before severe alteration on the asteroid, (2) possibly existed before parent-body accretion, and (3) later became simplified on the asteroid. Therefore, aqueous reactions on asteroids are not required conditions for cultivating complex SOM. Furthermore, we found that overall H over C ratios of SOM decrease with increasing aqueous alteration, and the estimate of H loss from the SOM is 10% to 30%. Organics seem to be a significant H2 source that may have caused subsequent chemical reactions in the Tagish Lake meteorite parent body. : 29 pages Article in Journal/Newspaper Tagish DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Tagish ENVELOPE(-134.272,-134.272,60.313,60.313) Tagish Lake ENVELOPE(-134.233,-134.233,59.717,59.717) |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
unknown |
topic |
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability physics.data-an FOS Physical sciences |
spellingShingle |
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability physics.data-an FOS Physical sciences Isa, Junko Orthous-Daunay, François-régis Beck, Pierre Herd, Christopher D. K. Vuitton, Veronique Flandinet, Laurène Aqueous Alteration on Asteroids Simplifies Soluble Organic Matter Mixtures |
topic_facet |
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability physics.data-an FOS Physical sciences |
description |
Biologically relevant abiotic extraterrestrial soluble organic matter (SOM) has been widely investigated to study the origin of life and the chemical evolution of protoplanetary disks. Synthesis of biologically relevant organics, in particular, seems to require aqueous environments in the early solar system. However, SOM in primitive meteorites includes numerous chemical species besides the biologically relevant ones, and the reaction mechanisms that comprehensively explain the complex nature of SOM are unknown. Besides, the initial reactants, which formed before asteroid accretion, were uncharacterized. We examined the mass distribution of SOM extracted from three distinct Tagish Lake meteorite fragments, which exhibit different degrees of aqueous alteration though they originated from a single asteroid. We report that mass distributions of SOM in the primordial fragments are well fit by the SchulzZimm (SZ) model for the molecular weight distribution patterns found in chain growth polymerization experiments. Also, the distribution patterns diverge further from SZ with increasing degrees of aqueous alteration. These observations imply that the complex nature of the primordial SOM (1) was established before severe alteration on the asteroid, (2) possibly existed before parent-body accretion, and (3) later became simplified on the asteroid. Therefore, aqueous reactions on asteroids are not required conditions for cultivating complex SOM. Furthermore, we found that overall H over C ratios of SOM decrease with increasing aqueous alteration, and the estimate of H loss from the SOM is 10% to 30%. Organics seem to be a significant H2 source that may have caused subsequent chemical reactions in the Tagish Lake meteorite parent body. : 29 pages |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Isa, Junko Orthous-Daunay, François-régis Beck, Pierre Herd, Christopher D. K. Vuitton, Veronique Flandinet, Laurène |
author_facet |
Isa, Junko Orthous-Daunay, François-régis Beck, Pierre Herd, Christopher D. K. Vuitton, Veronique Flandinet, Laurène |
author_sort |
Isa, Junko |
title |
Aqueous Alteration on Asteroids Simplifies Soluble Organic Matter Mixtures |
title_short |
Aqueous Alteration on Asteroids Simplifies Soluble Organic Matter Mixtures |
title_full |
Aqueous Alteration on Asteroids Simplifies Soluble Organic Matter Mixtures |
title_fullStr |
Aqueous Alteration on Asteroids Simplifies Soluble Organic Matter Mixtures |
title_full_unstemmed |
Aqueous Alteration on Asteroids Simplifies Soluble Organic Matter Mixtures |
title_sort |
aqueous alteration on asteroids simplifies soluble organic matter mixtures |
publisher |
arXiv |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2111.10004 https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.10004 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-134.272,-134.272,60.313,60.313) ENVELOPE(-134.233,-134.233,59.717,59.717) |
geographic |
Tagish Tagish Lake |
geographic_facet |
Tagish Tagish Lake |
genre |
Tagish |
genre_facet |
Tagish |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac2b34 |
op_rights |
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2111.10004 https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac2b34 |
_version_ |
1766213554244943872 |