Impacts on Ocean Worlds Are Sufficiently Frequent and Energetic to Be of Astrobiological Importance
Shannon M. MacKenzie,
Alexandra Pontefract,
R. Terik Daly
et al.
Abstract:Evidence for the beneficial role of impacts in the creation of urable or habitable environments on Earth prompts the question of whether meteorite impacts could play a similar role at other potentially urable/habitable worlds like Enceladus, Europa, and Titan. In this work, we demonstrate that to first order, impact conditions on these worlds are likely to have been consistent with the survival of organic compounds and/or sufficient for promoting synthesis in impact melt. We also calculate melt production and … Show more
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