Early Earth Organic Haze as a Global Prebiotic Chemistry Source

NATHAN REED, Karyn Rogers, Eleanor Browne, Margaret Tolbert, Boswell Wing, Shawn McGlynn, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

     Abstract Number: 423
     Working Group: Planetary Aerosols: From Earth to Exoplanets

Abstract
Atmospheric organic haze chemistry from methane photolysis has long been speculated to be a source of prebiotic molecules and nutrients in early Earth environments. However, the inclusion of sulfur, an essential element of biology, in prebiotic organic has chemistry has remained underexplored. Furthermore, in an early Earth environment, organic haze aerosol would settle out of the atmosphere onto the surface through deposition, most likely on bodies of water. Indeed, aqueous depositional processes would be a requirement for relevance to the prebiotic and early environmental fields. Yet, post-depositional chemical processes have been overlooked, and therefore the viability or potential role of organic haze in the context of prebiotic chemistry remains and open question. Here I present laboratory experiments that demonstrate that the inclusion of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in haze chemistry yields a variety of key sulfur-bearing biomolecules as products. Further, I present results that directly couple atmospheric organic haze chemistry with aqueous and aqueous-mineral chemistry. The presented work focuses on prebiotic chemistry and nutrient relevance of organic haze products, adopting key ageing conditions, aqueous reactants, and minerals central to prebiotic chemistry studies. The results show the formation or destruction of any haze biomolecules over time using ultra-high-resolution orbitrap mass spectrometry. These results have important implications for understanding the synthesis, chemical processes, and fate of biomolecules produced from organic haze chemistry in the context of coupled early Earth environments.