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adrian_b 19 hours ago

There are 2 distinct kinds of claims made about the role of meteorites fallen on Earth whose origin is in such bodies like the Ryugu asteroid.

One claim, which is likely to be true, is that in the beginning the Earth had a lower content of volatile elements, e.g. hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, oxygen and sulfur, than today. The reason is that Earth has condensed at a high temperature, being close to the Sun, and those elements would not have condensed.

Later, the Earth has been bombarded by a great number of asteroids formed far from the Sun, which were much richer in H, C, N, O and S, and this bombardment has provided a major part of the chemical elements required for water and for organic substances.

A second, different claim, which is almost certainly false, is that this bombardment of the Earth has provided not only the raw chemical elements, but also pre-synthesized organic substances, like amino-acids and nucleobases, which have taken part directly in the origin of life.

This second claim does not make sense. The meteorites rich in water and organic substances are extremely easily vaporized during atmospheric entry or during the impact with the surface and their content of organic substances would decompose.

Even if we suppose that some falling bodies were so big that parts of them survived until the surface, any organic substances thus brought on Earth could not help in any way the appearance of life.

Any form of life would need a continuous supply of such substances, otherwise immediately after consuming the few molecules adjacent to it the life form would die without descendants.

Life can appear only in a place where there is a continuous supply of energy and it can use only chemical substances that are continuously synthesized in abiotic conditions. It cannot appear based on sporadic events, like the fall of a meteorite, which would also destroy anything at its place of impact.

Such places where energy is available continuously and there are also the substances from which complex organic substances can be synthesized through catalysis by various minerals, mostly metallic sulfides, exist both on Earth and in other places in the Solar System. These are the places where either volcanic gases are released or similar gases are produced by the reaction of water with volcanic rocks, in hydrothermal vents. As far as we know, those are the places where life must have appeared, because all the necessary ingredients exist. The only mysterious part is how it has happened that a correct combination of the mineral catalysts required to synthesize all the needed organic molecules happened to be located in close proximity and in the right sequence.

Today, even if such places still exist on Earth, life could not appear again. First, the oxygen from air would destroy any substances thus formed, and even where oxygen is missing the ubiquitous bacteria would consume any organic substances that could form abiotically, preventing their accumulation and the formation of any kind of structure from them.

pfdietz 18 hours ago | parent [-]

> This second claim does not make sense. The meteorites rich in water and organic substances are extremely easily vaporized during atmospheric entry or during the impact with the surface and their content of organic substances would decompose.

Such meteorites fall to Earth even today. Their interiors are often ice cold.