Chlorophyll & the Red Spot

Under atmospheric conditions approximating those that probably existed on earth 4.5 billion years ago, scientists have duplicated the creation of many of the basic chemical building blocks of life. But one compound essential to the continuance of life has never been found in the primeval atmosphere of the laboratory: chlorophyll, which enables plants to use the energy of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into the food that plants and animals need. Now the missing compound may well have been created, further encouraging scientists to believe that they are on the right track toward understanding how life arose spontaneously when the world was still young.

In their experiments, Chemist Cyril Ponnamperuma and Geochemist Gordon Hodgson flashed a continuous electric arc through a mixture of ammonia, methane and water vapor at NASA's Ames Research Center, near San Francisco. The arc simulated lightning, and the mixture was similar to the atmosphere that most scientists believe existed before life began. In addition to the amino acids, proteins, nucleotides and other life-foundation molecules that were created in previous experiments--some by Ponnamperuma himself--a small amount of an unidentified substance was produced.

Endless Supply. Testing the substance, the NASA scientists discovered that it was either a porphyrin, a ring molecule or a closely related chemical structure. Significantly, the porphyrin ring molecule with a magnesium atom in the center is chlorophyll.

Once the porphyrins accumulated along with other basic life chemicals in the primitive oceans, the NASA scientists theorize, they interacted with magnesium ions in the ocean, leading eventually to the formation of chlorophyll. Before the appearance of chlorophyll, long-chain, carbon-based molecules could reproduce themselves only by using other of the limited building-block materials in the oceans. With chlorophyll available, some long-chain molecules were able, by photosynthesis, to produce their own life material out of plentiful water and carbon dioxide, thus availing themselves of an endless supply of building materials and ensuring that life would proliferate and endure.

Giant Crater. In a related experiment, Ponnamperuma and NASA Chemist Fritz Woeller flashed artificial lightning through a mixture of ammonia and methane simulating Jupiter's atmosphere. Besides producing amino acids and other organic materials that have led experimenters to speculate that primitive life could exist in the Jovian atmosphere, the discharges created large quantities of a translucent, ruby-red organic dye. This dye, the scientists speculate, may well explain the mark on Jupiter's surface, 30,000 miles long and 8,000 miles wide, that astronomers call the Great Red Spot.

If their experiment duplicates the conditions on Jupiter, they reason, the Jovian atmosphere may consist largely of red dye material. Because of white clouds of frozen ammonia crystals at the outer fringes of the atmosphere, the red atmosphere is largely invisible from above. But below the red spot, some scientists believe, there might be a giant meteor crater in the solid hydrogen surface of the planet. This crater, the NASA researchers suggest, may form a great vortex in the atmosphere that swirls the red-hued dye up through the cloud cover, thus creating Jupiter's distinctive red spot.

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