Cosmochemistry and the Origin of Life: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute held at Maratea, Italy, June 1–12, 1981 PDF
Preview Cosmochemistry and the Origin of Life: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute held at Maratea, Italy, June 1–12, 1981
Cosmochemistry and the Origin of Life NATO ADVANCED STUDY INSTITUTES SERIES Proceedings of the Advanced Study Institute Programme, which aims at the dissemination of advanced knowledge and the formation of contacts among scientists from different countries The series is published by an international board of publishers in conjunction with NATO Scientific Affairs Division A Life Sciences Plenum Publishing Corporation B Physics London and New York C Ma thema tical D. Reidel Publishing Company and Physical Dordrecht, Boston and London Sciences D Behavioural and Social Sciences Martinus Nijhoff Publishers E Engineering and The Hague, London and Boston Materials Sciences F Computer and Springer Verlag Systems Sciences Heidelberg G Ecological Sciences Series C - Mathematical and Physical Sciences Volume 101 - Cosmochemistry and the Origin of Life Cosmochemistry and the Origin of Life Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute held at Maratea, Italy, June 1-12,1981 edited by CYRIL PONNAMPERUMA Department of Chemistry, University ofM aryland, College Park, U.S.A. D. Reidel Publishing Company Dordrecht : Holland / Boston: U. S. A. / London: England Published in cooperation with NATO Scientific Affairs Division library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data NATO Advanced Study Institute (1981 : Maratea, Italy) Cosmochemistry and the origin of life. (NATO advanced study institutes series. Series C, Mathematical and physical sciences; v. 101) "Published in cooperation with NATO Scientific Affairs Division." Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Cosmochemistry-Congresses. 2. Life-Origin-Congresses. I. Ponnamperuma, Cyril, 1923- II. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Scientific Affairs Division. III, Title. IV. Series. QB450.N37 1981 577 82-24099 ISBN-13: 978-94-009-7074-8 c-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-7072-4 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-7072-4 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Boston Inc., 190 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322,3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland D. Reidel Publishing Company is a member of the Kluwer Group All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1983 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland and copyrightholders as specified on appropriate pages within Softcover reprint of the hardcover 15t edition 1983 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner CONTENTS Preface vii Cosmochemistry and the Origin of Life Cyril Ponnamperuma 1 Synthesis of the Chemical Elements V. E. Viola, Jr. 35 The Largest Molecules in Space: Interstellar Dust J. Mayo Greenberg 71 Comets, Interstellar Molecules, and the Origin of Life William M. Irvine and ~e Hjalmarson 113 Impact of Solar System Exploration on Theories of Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life Donald L. De Vincenzi 143 The Chemical Composition and Climatology of the Earth's Early Atmosphere A. Henderson-Sellers 175 The Dating of the Earliest Sediments on Earth Stephen Moorbath 213 Inorganic Chemistry of Earliest Sediments: Bioinorganic Chemical Aspects of the Origin and Evolution of Life Ei-Ichiro Ochiai 235 Biologically Mediated Isotope Fractionations: Biochemistry, Geochemical Significance arid Preservation in the Earth's Oldest Sediments Manfred Schidlowski 277 vi CONTENTS Organic Molecules as Chemical Fossils - The Molecular Fossil Record Geoffrey Eglinton 323 Appendix: Cosmochemistry and the Origin of Life G. Eglinton, A. Henderson-Sellers and S. Moorbath 361 Participants 365 Index 369 PREFACE For the first time in human history, developments in many branches of science provide us with an opportunity of formula ting a comprehensive picture of the universe from its beginning to the present time. It is an awesome reflection that the carbon in our bodies is the very carbon which was generated during the birth of a star. There is a perceptible continuum through the billions of years which can be revealed by the study of chemistry. Studies in nucleosynthesis have related the origin of the elements to the life history of the stars. The chemical elements we find on earth, HYdrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, were created in astronomical processes that took place in the past, and these elements are not spread throughout space in the form of stars and galaxies. Radioastronomers have discovered a vast array of organic molecules in the interstellar medium which have a bearing on prebiological chemical processes. Many of the molecules found so far contain the four elements, C, N, 0, H. Except for the chem ically unreactive He, these four elements are the most abundant in the galaxy. The origin of polyatomic interstellar molecules is an unresolved problem. While we can explain the formation of some diatomic molecules as due to two atom collisions, it is much more difficult to form polyatomic molecules by collisions between diatomic molecules and atoms. There may be other produc tion mechanisms at work such as reactions taking place on the surface of interstellar dust grains. Organic molecules which may be considered precursors to life have also been found in carbonaceous chondrites. The discovery an~ the dating of the earth's oldest sediments at around 3.8 x 10 years has helped us to get a glimpse of the face of our planet at the very dawn of terrestrial time. All these discoveries were examined in the light of the single theme--Cosmochemistry. Withjn the pages of this volume are vii C. Ponnamperu111ll red.). Cosmochemistry and the Origin of Life. vii-viii. Copyright © 1983 by D. Reidel Publishing Company. viii PREFACE assembled the authoritative statements of the principal lecturers of the NATO Workshop which was held in Maratea in June, 1981. There was ample opportunity for an exchange of ideas and discussion on this subject. The papers published thus reflect some of the thinking generated during a very enjoyable and intellectually stimulating period in Italy. We are grateful to the speakers, the participants and to NATO for having made such an intellectual workshop possible. Cyril Ponnamperuma College Park, Maryland June 1, 1982 COSMOCHEMISTRY AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE Cyril Ponnamperuma Laboratory of Chemical Evolution, Department of Chemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA HOW DID LIFE BEGIN? One of the first to speculate on the conditions necessary for the origin of life on earth was Erasmus Darwin, the grand father of Charles Darwin. In his Temple ~ Nature (1) he had written, "All vegetables and animals nm. existing were originally derived from the smallest microscopic ones formed by spontaneous vi tali ty." Perhaps this idea had influenced Charles Darwin in his own thinking. Several years later, he wrote to 'his friend Hooker (2) about some "warm little pond" with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc. present, in which he postulated that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes. About this time the physicist John Tyndall (3) argued that every portion of a living organism can be reduced to inorganic matter. In his essay on vitality in 1866, he suggested that one could conceive of the reverse change, from the inorganic to the organic, and that the special arrangement of elements in living bodies led to the phenomenon of life. In 1868, Thomas Huxley (4) delivered a lecture in Edinburgh in which he pointed out that protoplasm was substantially the same over the whole range of living things. To him, the existence of life depended on certain molecules such as carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous compounds. These compounds are lifeless, but when brought together, give rise to protoplasm. To the Russian biochemist, A. I. Oparin (5), more than to anyone else today, we owe our present ideas on the scientific approach to the question of the origin of life. In clear and scientifically C. Pon/1llmperuma red.), Cosmochemistry and the Origin of Life, 1-34. Copyright © 1983 by D. Reidel Publishing Company. 2 C. PONNAMPERUMA defensible terms, he pointed out that there was no fundamental difference between living organisms and brute matter. The complex combination of manifestations and properties so charac teristic of life must have arisen in the process of the evolution of matter. In 1928, the British biologist Haldane (6) expressed his own ideas on the origin of life. He attributed the synthesis of organic compounds to the action of ultraviolet light on the earth's primitive atmosphere. He suggested that the organic compounds accumulated till the primitive oceans had the consistency of a primordial soup. Twenty years after the appearance of Haldane's paper, in the Rationalist Annual, Bernal (7) theorized .before the British Physical Society in a lecture entitled, "The Physical Bases of Life:" Condensations and dehydrogenations are bound to lead to increasingly unsaturated substances, and ultimately to simple and possibly even to condensed ring structures, almost certainly con tain nitrogen, such as the pyrimidines and purines. The appearance of such molecules made possible still further synthesis. The primary difficulty, however, of imagining processes going this far was the extreme dilution of the system, if it is to take place in the free ocean. The concentration of products is an absolute necessity for any further evolution. THE RAW MATERIAL The raw material from which the building blocks of life have evolved consists of the chemical elements of the periodic table. Examination of the crust of the earth, the oceans, and the atmosphere provides us with the information about the abundance of these elements on the earth. Data on the elemental composition of matter beyond the earth come from several sources. The spectroscopic analysis of light from stars reveals the nature of the elements in them. The development of the science of radio astronomy has provided us with the microwave technique of detecting various elements and excited species in intergalactic space. Cosmic ray particles can supply us with samples of extra terrestrial matter. Meteorites and lunar samples have given us valuable knowledge of the composition of our solar system. A reasonable and consistent picture of the abundance of the elements in the universe can thus be obtained. Hydrogen is by far the most abundant element. It makes up 93% of the total number of atoms in the universe, and 76% of the universe by weight. When atomic abundances are plotted against atomic weights, there is in general an inverse correlation
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