Arizona State University researchers reporting this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have found that fragments of the Sutter’s Mill meteorite contain complex polyether- and ester-containing alkyl molecules not previously found in any meteorites.

The Sutter’s Mill meteorite is a rare carbonaceous chondrite which caused a sensation in April 2012 when its fireball was seen by many eyewitnesses in California.

“This is a meteorite whose organics had been found altered by heat and of little appeal for bio- or prebiotic chemistry, yet the very Solar System processes that lead to its alteration seem also to have brought about novel and complex molecules of definite prebiotic interest such as polyethers,” explained study lead author Prof Sandra Pizzarello from the Arizona State University’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

The scientists hydrothermally treated fragments of the Sutter’s Mill meteorite and then detected the compounds released by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

The hydrothermal conditions of the experiments, which also mimic early Earth settings, released a complex mixture of oxygen-rich compounds, the probable result of oxidative processes that occurred in the parent body.

They include a variety of long chain linear and branched polyethers, whose number is quite bewildering.

This addition to the inventory of organic compounds produced in extraterrestrial environments furthers the discourse of whether their delivery to the early Earth by comets and meteorites might have aided the molecular evolution that preceded the origins of life.

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Bibliographic information: Sandra Pizzarello et al. Processing of meteoritic organic materials as a possible analog of early molecular evolution in planetary environments. PNAS, published online September 09, 2013; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1309113110