Meteorites, Comets, and the Origins of Life on Earth

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - George W. Cooper from NASA-Ames Research Center will talk about the origins of life on Earth when he delivers the first Barringer Lecture for the spring 2008 semester. The lecture will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 11, in the Space Center Theater, Room 201 of the old University Museum building. Admission is free and open to all members of the university community and the public.

Carbonaceous meteorites and comets contain a diverse suite of carbon compounds. Meteorites have been delivering these compounds to Earth throughout the life of the solar system and therefore were likely to have played an important role in the origin and/or evolution of life.  

Among the classes of organic compounds found in carbonaceous meteorites are amino acids, amides and sugar derivatives. Sugars and their derivatives are critical to the chemistry of life and are components of molecules such as DNA and RNA. This talk will focus on the optical and isotopic properties of certain meteorite sugar derivatives, sugar acids. In life as we know it, only one of two possible mirror-images of carbon compounds are used in proteins and nucleic acids. Due to their close structural relationship to today's sugars, determining the mirror image ratios of ancient sugar derivatives may shed light on the beginnings of the properties that distinguish carbon compounds associated with living organisms on Earth.

Cooper obtained his bachelor's degree in chemistry at Western Michigan University and his doctorate in chemistry at Arizona State University. His research involves the molecular and stable isotope analysis of organic compounds in carbonaceous meteorites. In 1996, Cooper received an award from the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life for the discovery of sugar derivatives in meteorites.

The lecture is part of the Barringer Lecture Series, which is sponsored by the Barringer Crater Co. Refreshments will be available after the talk. 

Please see http://spacecenter.uark.edu to learn more.

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Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences
(479) 575-7625, csaps@uark.edu