Earth's Early Atmosphere and Oceans, and The Origin of Life [Paperback]

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the chemical nature of the Earths early surface environment and how that led to the origin of life. This includes a detailed discussion of the likely process by which life emerged using as much quantitative information as possible. The emergence of life and the prior surface conditions of the Earth have implications for the evolution of Earths surface environment over the following 2-2.5 billion years. The last part of the book? discusses how these changes took place and the evidence from the geologic record that supports this particular version of early and evolving conditions.

Introduction.- Why this book? /What I am trying to do.- Four previous treatments  Oparin, ?Rubey, Walker, and Holland.- Outstanding problems.- Accretional history of Earth.- Accreting materials.- Volatile components and total volatiles available.- Sequence and rates of events  accretion time.- State of surface near end of accretion.- Nature of final accretional phase.- Processes of degassing.- Impact degassing.- Small impactors.- Large impactors.- Intermediate impactors.- High temperature degassing of accreted solids.- Low temperature degassing of accreted solids  importance of water produced during initial phase of late accretion.- Evidence from field and laboratory studies.- Atmospheric processing of degassed volatiles.- Photochemistry in brief.- Recycling of C and N compounds in the surface and near-surface environment.- The nature of the early ocean.- Early Archean geography.- Global ocean should be obvious.- Ocean ridge systems and hot-spots.- Continental growth  processes and history.- Proto-island arcs and shorelines.- Degassing processes.- Prebiotic chemistry  why we should pay attention to this.- Availability of critical C-N species.- Availability of phosphorus (possible complexing with organics).- Concentration processes - Warm pond?.- Eigens hypercycle and the emergence of life.- Key role of tRNA.- The nature of tlĂL