Methane production by large iron meteorite impacts on early Earth

Abstract

The continuous existence of life on the Earth is thought to have begun around 4 Ga, which is near the end of the heavy bombardment period. Impacts of asteroids and comets may have produced and delivered organic matter on the Hadean Earth. However, the nature of those processes has not been understood well yet. In this paper, we propose a new process of organic synthesis induced by asteroid impacts. We consider the effect of impact vapor condensates reentering the Earth's early atmosphere. Vapor condensates produced by a large-scale impact are dispersed around the globe and reenter the atmosphere at very high speed. The reentering condensates are heated and decelerated by the friction with the atmosphere and form a "hot condensate layer" around the globe. We calculate the temperature and atmospheric pressure of the hot condensate layer as a function of time. A Fischer-Tropsch reaction on the surface of the reentering iron and nickel condensates will lead to efficient methane production. The reaction rate of Fischer-Tropsch catalysis is estimated based on a kinetic model. Calculation results indicate that the amount of methane produced by the impact of an iron meteorite with a diameter of 10 km at 15 km sec-1 of velocity reaches ∼1012 - 1013 kg. Some of the methane formed by this process is photodissociated to HCN and organic aerosols. The amount of the resulting HCN is estimated to be ∼1010 - 1012 kg. This is 103 - 104 times the preimpact inventory of HCN on the Earth, which is maintained by UV radiation and electric discharge in a mildly reducing (i.e., CO-CO2 dominant) atmosphere. Such an episodic increase in the organic inventory on the surface of the early Earth may have played an important role in the origin of life.