ReviewCold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology2010
Earth's earliest atmospheres.
Review in Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed.
- The role of minerals in prebiotic evolution: Implications for identifying worlds with the potential for life's origin.Fundamental research · 2026Review
- Photochemistry and haze in chemically reducing terrestrial atmospheres.Fundamental research · 2026Review
- The Emergence of an Urable Earth: How Early Planetary Evolution Shaped the Chemical Window for Life's Origin.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Redox chemistry of early Earth and the origin of life.Communications chemistry · 2026Review
- Chemical Routes to Primitive Membranes: Prebiotic Lipid Formation at the Origin of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Various inorganic phosphorus species in prebiotic Earth and extraterrestrial settings.Discover chemistry · 2026Review
- Ancestral Protein-Based Lighting.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2025Article
- Life on Venus?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Article
- Terrestrial atmospheric ion implantation occurred in the nearside lunar regolith during the history of Earth's dynamo.Communications earth & environment · 2025Article
- Iron sulfide-catalyzed gaseous CONature communications · 2024Article
- Article
- Manganese(II) promotes prebiotically plausible non-enzymatic RNA ligation reactions.Chemical communications (Cambridge, England) · 2024Article
- A Surface Hydrothermal Source of Nitriles and Isonitriles.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- 'Seeing' the electromagnetic spectrum: spotlight on the cryptochrome photocycle.Frontiers in plant science · 2024Review
- Oxidation of iron by giant impact and its implication on the formation of reduced atmosphere in the early Earth.Science advances · 2023Article
- Synthesis of prebiotic organics from COScientific reports · 2023Article
- Formation of Amino Acids and Carboxylic Acids in Weakly Reducing Planetary Atmospheres by Solar Energetic Particles from the Young Sun.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Stability of DL-Glyceraldehyde under Simulated Hydrothermal Conditions: Synthesis of Sugar-like Compounds in an Iron(III)-Oxide-Hydroxide-Rich Environment under Acidic Conditions.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Azoles as Auxiliaries and Intermediates in Prebiotic Nucleoside Synthesis.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2022Article
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Earth is the one known example of an inhabited planet and to current knowledge the likeliest site of the one known origin of life. Here we discuss the origin of Earth's atmosphere and ocean and some of the environmental conditions of the early Earth as they may relate to the origin of life. A key punctuating event in the narrative is the Moon-forming impact, partly because it made Earth for a short time absolutely uninhabitable, and partly because it sets the boundary conditions for Earth's subsequent evolution. If life began on Earth, as opposed to having migrated here, it would have done so after the Moon-forming impact. What took place before the Moon formed determined the bulk properties of the Earth and probably determined the overall compositions and sizes of its atmospheres and oceans. What took place afterward animated these materials. One interesting consequence of the Moon-forming impact is that the mantle is devolatized, so that the volatiles subsequently fell out in a kind of condensation sequence. This ensures that the volatiles were concentrated toward the surface so that, for example, the oceans were likely salty from the start. We also point out that an atmosphere generated by impact degassing would tend to have a composition reflective of the impacting bodies (rather than the mantle), and these are almost without exception strongly reducing and volatile-rich. A consequence is that, although CO- or methane-rich atmospheres are not necessarily stable as steady states, they are quite likely to have existed as long-lived transients, many times. With CO comes abundant chemical energy in a metastable package, and with methane comes hydrogen cyanide and ammonia as important albeit less abundant gases.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.