Frequent impacts of extraterrestrial objects melted the embryonic Earth, forming an inorganic body with a CO2 and N2-rich atmosphere. How and when abundant organic molecules appeared in such an inorganic world are fundamental inquiries into the origin of life. Here we report a facile impact synthesis of some biomolecules and their precursors from solid carbon (13C), iron, nickel, water, and nitrogen all of which would have been available during impact events on Earth's early oceans. Geological and geochemical studies on the terrestrial, lunar and meteoritic materials suggest that such impacts were frequent on the Hadean Earth and indicate that ordinary chondrite, the most abundant meteorite, contains a substantial amount of iron-nickel and small quantities of solid carbon. Biomolecules and their precursors identified in the present shock recovery experiments are carboxylic acids (fatty acids), amines, and an amino acid. Therefore impacts of extraterrestrial objects on Hadean oceans might have prepared organic molecules in necessary abundance, variety, and complexity for life's origin, because there might be additional, as yet undetermined, products in the recovered samples and because natural impacts necessarily have greater duration and pressure than those of the experiment.
