Word: ammonias
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...totally devoid of any kind of matter. But in the past few decades, they have been forced to change their minds. Besides confirming the presence of hydrogen and other earthly elements with optical and radio telescopes, astronomers have lately discovered a number of complex molecules in interstellar space: water, ammonia, formaldehyde and pairs of hydrogen and oxygen atoms that are ingredients of many other chemical combinations. Now the list has been further expanded. Researchers at the Bell Telephone Labs have detected large quantities of carbon monoxide in vast clouds of gas and dust in the Milky...
Four billion years ago, when the young earth was still enveloped in a deadly atmosphere of ammonia and methane, the first forerunners of life emerged. How those complex molecules were formed remains a profound mystery. But scientists believe that some of the earth's primordial atmospheric molecules were broken up into their constituent atoms; regrouping into new molecules, these atoms formed organic compounds called amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein-and of life...
...Cornell researchers, a young Israeli chemist named Akiba Bar-Nun and his biochemist wife Nurit, tested the theory in a relatively simple experiment. They filled one end of a brass-and-Pyrex tube with a mixture of ammonia, methane, ethane and water vapor-all probable ingredients of the earth's early atmosphere. A thin plastic membrane separated the gases from the other end of the tube, which contained chemically inert helium. The Bar-Nuns increased the helium pressure until the membrane broke. This produced a shock wave that swept into the gaseous mixture at high speed, momentarily creating temperatures...
...process was remarkably efficient. Carl Sagan, director of Cornell's Planetary Studies Laboratory, calculates that as much as 36% of the ammonia was converted into amino acids-a far better yield than that obtained in tests using ultraviolet radiation. Reason: the temperature rises resulting from the shock waves were too brief to break up any of the newly formed molecules. Indeed, the shock-tube process worked so well that Sagan has suggested a highly practical application: a cheap method of making amino acids for protein food supplements to fight malnutrition...
...primitive atmosphere and suggest how the precursors of life were created? To help answer such questions, scientists may soon try a much larger proving ground. In 1972, the first of several unmanned space probes is scheduled to pass close to Jupiter, which apparently has a methane and ammonia atmosphere much like the one that one shrouded the earth. Data from the missions may confirm that the processes now under way in Jupiter's atmosphere parallel those that occurred on earth bil lions of years...