Impact melting of frozen oceans on the early Earth: Implications for the origin of life
Open accessAbstract
Without sufficient greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the early Earth would have become a permanently frozen planet because the young Sun was less luminous than it is today. Several resolutions to this faint young Sun-frozen Earth paradox have been proposed, with an atmosphere rich in CO 2 being the one generally favored. However, these models assume that there were no mechanisms for melting a once frozen ocean. Here we show that bolide impacts between about 3.6 and 4.0 billion years ago could have episodically melted an ice-covered early ocean. Thaw-freeze cycles associated with bolide impacts could have been important for the initiation of abiotic reactions that gave rise to the first living organisms.
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Key amino acids form most easily in cold conditions during prebiotic synthesis.
“Experiments by Miller and colleagues (Bada et al. 1994;Levy et al. 2000) showed that prebiotic synthesis of key amino acids occur most readily under cold conditions.”
From Environmental Adaptation from the Origin of Life to the Last Universal Common Ancestor (2018) · cites this paper as Bada et al. 1994
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- Authors
- Bada, J. L., Bigham, C., & Miller, S. L.
- Affiliations
- Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- ORCID
- Bada, J. L.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 1994-02-15
- Volume
- 91
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1248-1250
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC43134
- OpenAlex
- W2135193550
- Cited by
- 146
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 13
- FWCI
- 2.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Origins and Evolution of Life
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Astro and Planetary Science
- Keywords
- impact melting, early Earth, faint young Sun paradox, bolide impact, greenhouse gases, CO2 atmosphere, origin of life, early solar system
- MeSH terms
- Origin of Life, Amino Acids, Atmosphere, Carbon Dioxide, Ice, Oceans and Seas, Seawater, Sunlight, Earth, Planet, Minor Planets, Evolution, Planetary
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