The stability of benzene in planetary atmospheres
- 1Department of Physical and Macromolecular Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czechia (knizeka@gmail.com)
- 2J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry, Czech Acedemy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia
- 3Department of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czechia
Benzene is the simplest organic compound with a 6-carbon aromatic ring. As such, it was used as a first order representative of aromatic compounds in planetary atmospheres. These compounds can be brought by asteroid impacts into rocky planetary atmospheres, where they can serve as precursors for further synthesis. Our experiments show that benzene vapours in nitrogen-dominated atmospheres subjected to asteroid impacts (modelled by laboratory laser shots) lead to the formation of acetylene and hydrogen cyanide. Both these products appear in many proposed mechanisms of prebiotic chemistry.
How to cite: Knížek, A. and Petera, L.: The stability of benzene in planetary atmospheres, Europlanet Science Congress 2022, Granada, Spain, 18–23 Sep 2022, EPSC2022-830, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2022-830, 2022.
