Organic compounds in meteorites—II Aromatic hydrocarbons

<title>Chemical biomarkers and microfossils in carbonaceous meteorites</title>

“…Nooner and Oro 44 investigated extractable aliphatic hydrocarbons and Olson et al 45 Subsequent studies of these meteorites (as well as Murchison and Allende which fell in 1969) by numerous researchers have revealed that carbonaceous chondrites contain a rich suite of chemical biomarkers, including polymeric matter and organics, complex cycloalkanes, purines, pyrimidines, and chiral amino acids. [46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] The distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (m/e = 178 (phenanthrene C 14 H 10 ), 202 (pyrene C 16 H 10 ), 228 (chrysene C 18 H 12 ), 252 (benzopyrene C 20 H 12 ) in Murchison 48 are very similar to the PAH distribution found in the Martian meteorite ALH84001.…”

Organic Geochemistry of Meteorites

“…The extracts were characterized by mass spectroscopy (Meinschein, 1963a,b;Meinschein et al, 1963) low-temperature fluorescence spectroscopy (Vdovykin, 1964;Vinogradov and Vdovykin, 1964), and IR and UV spectroscopy (Meinschein, 1963a,b;Meinschein et al, 1963;Olson et al, 1967) and GC (Han et al, 1969;Meinschein, 1963a;Nooner and Oró , 1967;Olson et al, 1967). The extracts were characterized by mass spectroscopy (Meinschein, 1963a,b;Meinschein et al, 1963) low-temperature fluorescence spectroscopy (Vdovykin, 1964;Vinogradov and Vdovykin, 1964), and IR and UV spectroscopy (Meinschein, 1963a,b;Meinschein et al, 1963;Olson et al, 1967) and GC (Han et al, 1969;Meinschein, 1963a;Nooner and Oró , 1967;Olson et al, 1967).…”

Reaction between H2, CO, and H2S over Fe, Ni metal in the solar nebula: Experimental evidence for the formation of sulfur‐bearing organic molecules and sulfides

“…As first suggested by Cronin and Chang (1993), given the amounts of nonvolatile hydrocarbons in Murchison, it would follow that the meteorite originally contained much larger quantities of the volatile lower hydrocarbons if the exponential decline in amount with increasing C number that characterizes several other classes of compounds is also applicable to the hydrocarbons. In fact, several authors (Olson et al, 1967;Pering and Ponnampemma, 1971;Basile et al, 1984;Morgan et al, 1991;Wing and Bada, 1991) have suggested that the aromatic hydrocarbons of carbonaceous chondrites derived from the processing of preexisting aliphatic volatile hydrocarbons.…”