The Effect of Pressure on the Prebiotic Carbon of the Early Solar System

High pressures, along with thermal processes and irradiation, have a measurable effect on carbonaceous compounds which are found throughout the solar system. High pressure environments, such as those generated by impacts, occur frequently during the evolution of the solar system, and the effects of pressure on the carbonaceous materials present can influence the subsequent chemistry of the body. In situ high pressure synchrotron source Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy coupled with computational models has been used to directly study the effects of pressure on carbonaceous materials. Our work using these techniques investigates the specific case of structural sugars, where ribose and deoxyribose have differing responses to high pressures. These particular carbonaceous materials play a key role in the prebiotic chemistry of the early Earth as constituents of the bioinformational molecules ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) respectively. Ribose is substantially less stable than deoxyribose at pressures exceeding 14 GPa and shows less recovery on decompression. Our results imply that the modest impacts experienced throughout the solar system could substantially alter the carbonaceous payload of many bodies, with consequences for any prebiotic chemistry.