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Tholins: The red goo critical to life in the universe

Author: Matthew Davis / Source: Big Think

  • Tholins are a broad group of organic compounds formed when simpler molecules are irradiated.
  • They are extremely common in our solar system, and studies have shown that their properties are incredibly useful to emerging life.
  • By tracking and understanding tholins, we might be able to find extraterrestrial life and even explain how life began on Earth.

It was no easy feat for life to get started on Earth. There was a long way to go from jumbles of dead molecules to the complicated machinery of life. Earth’s tenuous atmosphere didn’t shield the planet so well from cosmic radiation, making it difficult for life to even get a foothold. There was no source of energy for food.

But as the environment changed, these obstacles were eventually surmounted, and life popped into existence anyways. There are a lot of ideas about how this happened, but many of these involve a broad group of cosmically abundant goo called tholins.

Carl Sagan’s coinage

Carl Sagan wasn’t just famous for waxing poetic about the Pale Blue Dot: He was an accomplished astronomer, and in collaboration with his colleague Bishun Khare, he developed the concept of tholins, which he described as a “a brown, sometimes sticky, residue […] synthesized by ultraviolet (UV) light or spark discharge.”

Giving a name to these substances was necessary. Although they can vary in form and content wildly, they all share similar physical and chemical properties, and they are all formed in a similar way. Sagan—who really did have a way with words—also noted that he was “tempted by the phrase ‘star-tar’.”

What they’re made of

Chao He, Xinting Yu, Sydney Riemer, and Sarah Hörst, Johns Hopkins University

Powdery, brownish-red tholins made at Johns Hopkins University.

Essentially, tholins start off as cosmically abundant but relatively simple molecules like methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2), or nitrogen (N2). When irradiated, these compounds undergo a chain reaction, producing reddish, gooey tholins.

In a blog post for the Planetary Society, Sarah Hörst, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, described their complexity:

Ultra-high-resolution mass spectrometry measurements I analyzed while in graduate school demonstrated that tholin contains at…

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