Extraterrestrial Impacts Creating Architectures for Life

Abstract

Prebiotic chemical evolution that led to the emergence of life on primitive Earth is interlinked with the delivery of organic material through the impact of comets, asteroids and meteorites. The catastrophic nature of impact leads to significant damage to planetary bodies. The high pressure and temperature can cause molecules to break apart and they may not survive in such extreme conditions. Also, impact-induced shock can cause impacted molecules to undergo vibration, dissociation, deformation, depending on their chemical properties and thus can offer enormous potential for the synthesis of building blocks of life. Novel experimental and theoretical approaches are required to simulate the phenomena that occur during impacts. In this brief review, we discuss impacts and related processes through laboratory experiments and simulations that study the impact-shock chemistry and its role in the Origins of Life.