Polymer amide as a carrier of 15N in Allende and Acfer 086 meteorites

Maclolm W McGeoch, Tomas Samoril, David Zapotok, Julie E M McGeoch

(Submitted on 15 Nov 2018)

Polymers of amino acids have been found in Allende and Acfer 086, with extra-terrestrial origin evidenced by isotopically enhanced satellite peaks in the 800-1200 Dalton mass range. The present work employs focused ion beam milling of micron scale powder to generate negative ion spectra containing CN ions at masses 26 and 27 for 15N determination. Respectively, for CN ions, Allende and Acfer 086 show delta 15N = 410 +/- 220 per mil and 1,015 +/- 220 per mil in the powder samples. We measure an exact 1:2 ratio of C2 to CN negative ions that is consistent with ion beam fragmentation of a polymer amide -CCN- backbone into diatomic fragments. It is inferred that polymer amide comprises a large part of the 15N bearing organic material in this CV3 meteorite class.

Comments: 15 pages, 3 tables, 6 figures

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)

Report number: MAPS 3132

Cite as: arXiv:1811.06578 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1811.06578v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)

Submission history

From: Julie McGeoch 

[v1] Thu, 15 Nov 2018 20:11:13 UTC (2,906 KB)

https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.06578

Astrobiology, Astrochemistry