Chemical evolution and ammonia in the early earth's atmosphere

A. Henderson-sellers; A. W. Schwartz

doi:10.1038/287526a0

Chemical evolution and ammonia in the early earth's atmosphere

A. Henderson-sellers^*, A. W. Schwartz

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

40 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A constraint on research into the evolution of the Earth's atmosphere may have been resolved by recent work on the photochemical reduction of atmospheric nitrogen by a naturally occurring form of TiO₂ (ref. 1). We show here that this source could have provided a small but vital abiological supply of ammonia in the early atmosphere of the Earth. Locally the levels of NH₃ produced by this mechanism satisfy the requirements of origin-of-life biologists whilst global levels do not conflict with chemical and physical constraints on the surface/atmosphere system nor with geological evidence for early Precambrian conditions.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	526-528
Number of pages	3
Journal	Nature
Volume	287
Issue number	5782
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/287526a0
Publication status	Published - 1980
Externally published	Yes

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10.1038/287526a0

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AB - A constraint on research into the evolution of the Earth's atmosphere may have been resolved by recent work on the photochemical reduction of atmospheric nitrogen by a naturally occurring form of TiO2 (ref. 1). We show here that this source could have provided a small but vital abiological supply of ammonia in the early atmosphere of the Earth. Locally the levels of NH3 produced by this mechanism satisfy the requirements of origin-of-life biologists whilst global levels do not conflict with chemical and physical constraints on the surface/atmosphere system nor with geological evidence for early Precambrian conditions.

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Chemical evolution and ammonia in the early earth's atmosphere

Abstract

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