Comets and the environment of the primitive Earth Limits of Life

Abstract

Thirty years ago it was suggested that comets impacting on the primitive Earth may have represented a significant source of terrestrial volatiles, including some important precursors for prebiotic synthesis (Oro, 1961, Nature 190: 389). This possibility is strongly supported not only by models of the collisional history of the early Earth, but also by astronomical evidence that suggests that freequent collisions of cometlike bodies freom the circumstellar disk around the star beta Pictoris are taking place. Although a significant freaction ofthe complex organic compounds that appear to be present in cometary nuclei were probably destroyed during impact, it is argued that cometary collisions with the primitive Earth represented an important source of both freeeenergy and volatiles, and may have created transient, gaseous environments in which prebiotic synthesis may have taken place.