Abundant Ammonia in Ancient Asteroid The work is being published
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The paper is titled, “Abundant ammonia in primitive asteroids
and the case for a possible exobiology,” and is co-authored by
Pizzarello, geologist Lynda Williams, chemists Gregory Holland
and Jeffery Yarger, all from ASU and Jennifer Lehman of UC Santa
Cruz. The finding of a high concentration of nitrogen-bearing
molecules in an asteroidal environment shown by the new study is
very provocative. Besides the noble gases, nitrogen is the
fourth most abundant element in the Sun and the universe
overall. On the Earth, it is an indispensable ingredient of the
biosphere, being essential to DNA, RNA and proteins. In other
words, it is necessary for life's information transfer and
catalytic processes. On the early Earth, on the other hand, the
prebiotic inventory of reduced nitrogen necessary for the
formation of N-containing biomolecules has been difficult to
predict. The hypotheses of a red