Carbon and oxygen isotope evidence for a protoplanetary disk origin of organic solids in meteorites.

ABSTRACT: Macromolecular organic solids found in primitive meteorites were the main source of carbon delivered to forming planets in the early Solar System. However, the conditions under which this material formed and its subsequent incorporation into growing planetesimals remains a subject of vigorous debate. Here, we show that C isotope variations among these organics in most carbonaceous chondrites are strongly correlated with mass-independent O isotope anomalies exhibited by their host meteorites. As the latter signature has been argued to track abundances of nebular water generated from photochemical processing of CO gas, the C isotope variability of refractory organic solids may relate to this same process. We propose a framework in which CO photolysis simultaneously produces H₂O an

SUBMITTER: Lawrence WM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12184486 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature