初期地球における隕石衝突によるアミノ酸および核酸塩基の生成に関する研究

抄録

Emergence of life's building blocks on the prebiotic Earth should be the fundamental step to the origins of life. Geological evidences suggest that such organic compounds accumulated at some point in the time between 4.4 to 3.8 billion years ago. During this period, the flux of extraterrestrial objects was significantly higher than the subsequent periods. Such extraterrestrial objects might have provided substantial amounts of metallic iron to the surface of the Earth. Shock-recovery experiments simulating the impact-induced reactions of such iron-bearing objects suggest that hypervelocity oceanic impacts of meteorites form nucleobases and various amino acids as well as amines and carboxylic acids. High annual mass flux of such large objects suggests that the impact-induced formation was not negligible as a source of organic compounds on the early Earth. Further investigations on the impact-induced reactions and the nature of extraterrestrial objects would elucidate the fundamental step to the origin of life.