Boreskov

FLUCTUATING HYDROTHERMAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR PREBIOTIC CHEMISTRYKompanichenko V.Institute for Complex Analysis of Regional Problems FEB RAS, 4 Sholom Aleyhem Street,Birobidzhan 679016, RussiaAccording to the author’s approach to the origin of life, conditions in the maternalmedium should be changeable (Kompanichenko, 2009). From this point of view,hydrothermal systems and their discharges in ocean or terrestrial groundwater aquiferscharacterizing availability of thermodynamic and/or physic‐chemical fluctuations should beconsidered as the most appropriate environments for life to emerge. To get someexperimental data in this way, fluctuations of pressure, temperature and availability oforganics in fluid were investigated in several hydrothermal fields in Kamchatka. Temperatureand chemical composition of the thermal discharges in are variable: pH is within the interval2.5‐8.5, temperature of hot springs ranges from < 60 to 98 °C, steam‐gas jets ‐ up to 380 °C.Concentrations of Cl ‐ , SO 4 2‐ , HCO 3 ‐ , Na + , Ca 2+ , Mg 2+ , NH 4 + are prevalent in the liquid phase.The gas phase contains CO 2 , CH 4 , H 2 S, H 2 , N 2 as major components. Data on pressure andtemperature monitoring in 27 deep (600‐2000 m) bore holes was processed. Most of thebore holes open water‐steam mixture with the temperature varies from < 100 to 239 °C andpressure from < 1 to 35 bars at the wellheads. The estimated vertical gradients of pressureand temperature are within the intervals 2.5‐5 bars and 11‐15 °C per 100 meters. Correlationcoefficient between pressure and temperature ranges from 0.89 to 0.99 (average 0.96).Pressure monitoring at the depth 950 meters in the bore hole № 30 (Mutnovsky field)reveals high‐amplitude (amplitudes up to 1‐2 bars) irregular macrofluctuations, and lowamplitudequite regular microoscillations of pressure (amplitudes 0.1‐0.3 bars) with theperiod about 20 minutes. The periods of pressure oscillations at the wellheads of severalboreholes in Pauzhetsky and Mutnovsky systems ranges from 10 to 60 minutes. So, macro‐and microfluctuations of the thermodynamic parameters are wide‐spread phenomena in theexplored hydrothermal systems.To analyze moderately volatile organic compounds in the hydrothermal fields, the gaschromatomass spectrometer Shimatsu (GCMS‐QP20105) was used. Samples of water andcondensate of water‐steam mixture were taken from hot springs and bore holes (60‐2000meters in depth). Then organics was extracted from water into the cartridges OASIS and C18110