Results of an Eight-Year Extraction of Phosphorus Minerals within the Seymchan Meteorite

Abstract

In-fall of extraterrestrial material including meteorites and interstellar dust particles during the late heavy bombardment are known to have brought substantial amounts of reduced oxidation-state phosphorus to the early Earth in the form of siderophilic minerals, e.g., schreibersite ((FeNi)3P). In this report, we present results on the reaction of meteoritic phosphide minerals in the Seymchan meteorite in ultrapure water for 8 years. The ions produced during schreibersite corrosion (phosphite, hypophosphate, pyrophosphate, and phosphate) are stable and persistent in aqueous solution over this timescale. These results were also compared with the short-term corrosion reactions of the meteoritic mineral schreibersite’s synthetic analog Fe3P in aqueous and non-aqueous solutions (ultrapure water and formamide). This finding suggests that the reduced-oxidation-state phosphorus (P) compounds including phosphite could be ubiquitous and stable on the early Earth over a long span of time and such compounds could be readily available on the early Earth.

Prebiotic Syntheses of Organophosphorus Compounds from Reduced Source of Phosphorus in Non-Aqueous Solvents

“…Figure 1 shows the H-coupled 31 P-NMR spectrum of a Fenton solution after the completion of the reaction, followed by quenching with a base (IPF solution). Peak (a) represents a wide triplet for hypophosphite identified by comparing the coupling constant values (J); phosphite splits into a wide doublet (peak b) and was also confirmed by its coupling constant value to be around 550-570 Hz [48,51], orthophosphate as a singlet peak (peak c), and pyrophosphate as a singlet around −5 to −6 ppm. This IPF solution readily reacted with organics, and on heating with organic substrates (in non-aqueous solvents) at 55-68 • C resulted in the formation of various organophosphorus species.…”

“…where S/N is the signal-to-noise ratio, and Scans means the number of NMR scans taken [37,51]. This relationship was empirically determined and is accurate to about 10% over the range of 10 −4 to 10 −2 M based on the various sample spectra obtained [37,51].…”

“…For 31 P-NMR analyses, the samples were analyzed on a 600-MHz Bruker Neo NMR operating at 242.9 MHz in both H-coupled and H-decoupled modes. The width of the spectrum was 200 ppm, and the running temperature was 22 • C. The P products of the reactions were quantified by peak integration method as previously reported [39,[48][49][50][51]. The relaxation time (D1) used between NMR scans throughout this study was set to 2 s. This was compared to several experiments run at D1 = 30 s. Since the integral values of D1 = 2 s and D1 = 30 experiments were comparable, a D1 = 2 s is considered quantitative, and the remaining experiments were run at D1 = 2 s. The sample preparation for the NMR analysis has been discussed in detail in Section 2.2.…”

“…The molarity [M] of the solutions for reaction Set-1 and Set-2 (Section 2.3) was calculated using the formula (Equation ( 1)) as suggested previously [37,51].…”

“…where S/N is the signal-to-noise ratio, and Scans means the number of NMR scans taken [37,51]. This relationship was empirically determined and is accurate to about 10% over the range of 10 −4 to 10 −2 M based on the various sample spectra obtained [37,51]. MS analyses were formed in negative ion mode on a 6130 Single Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (Agilent, Santa Clara, CA, USA) attached to an Agilent 1200 HPLC by direct injection, and deionized water was used as a solvent as reported previously [48][49][50].…”