164 ABIOGENIC ORGANIC-CHEMICAL EVOLUTION 



the primaeval Earth. In particular, he disregarded con- 

 temporary conditions and considered that lightning was 

 continually striking through the primaeval atmosphere and 

 converting the molecular nitrogen in it into ammonia and 

 oxides which reacted with carbon dioxide and thus produced 

 what Allen regarded as the original carbon compounds on 

 the Earth. 



C. B. Lipman** also assumed greater electrical activity in 

 the primaeval atmosphere when he tried to explain the 

 formation there of organic compounds from carbon dioxide, 

 water and nitrates. In his book R. Beutner'^^ also assumes 

 that in the primaeval atmosphere, consisting of carbon di- 

 oxide, water vapour and ammonia, complicated organic com- 

 pounds were formed as the result of powerful electrical dis- 

 charges. 



It is true that these conclusions were arrived at in an 

 a priori way without any profound physico-chemical analysis 

 of the phenomena under discussion. It was, however, already 

 known in M. Berthelot's^" time that under the influence of 

 flashing, and in particular, of silent discharges of electricity, 

 carbon dioxide could be reduced by hydrogen to carbon mon- 

 oxide with the formation of small amounts of organic sub- 

 stances having the general formulae (ch2o)„ or (cH402)n. Later 

 W. Lob,^^ S. M. Losanitsch," and others" showed experi- 

 mentally that in silent electrical discharges a mixture of 

 water and carbon dioxide can form formic acid and formalde- 

 hyde, which are further transformed into glycolic aldehyde 

 which then polymerises to form carbohydrates. 



On the basis of such observations one may presume that 

 in the atmosphere of the Earth at the present time minimal 

 quantities of organic substances are formed from water and 

 carbon dioxide as the result of flash or silent discharges. This, 

 of course, could also have taken place in the primaeval atmo- 

 sphere, though it is doubtful whether the reduction of carbon 

 dioxide played any substantial part in view of the very small 

 concentration of carbon dioxide then present. 



A far more important effect of electrical discharges was 

 the transformation of the hydrocarbons of the primaeval 

 atmosphere, to which we shall return later. 



As the third source of energy on the surface of the Earth 



