Tau.Neutrino said:

Lightning Strikes Played Role in Creating Prebiotic Phosphorus on Early Earth, Study Suggests

Phosphorus is one of the key elements for life, involved in biomolecules such as DNA, RNA, phospholipids, and adenosine triphosphate. Phosphide minerals — such as the mineral schreibersite — delivered to early Earth in meteorites have been advocated as a main source of prebiotic phosphorus. Planetary scientists believed minimal amounts of these minerals were also brought to our planet through billions of lightning strikes. But now a team of researchers from the University of Leeds and Yale University has established that lightning strikes were just as significant as meteorites in performing this essential function.

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I honestly hadn’t thought much about prebiotic phosphorus. Phosphorus is more common than sulfur and is only slightly less common than carbon, and all are necessary in all extant forms of life. So it would be present in the Earth’s crust from the year dot I assume. The oxidation of phosphines to phosphates requires free oxygen which would not have been available on Earth when it had its primary atmosphere, and certainly isn’t available on meteorites.

What is the affinity of phosphorus for oxygen, as compared to the affinity of hydrogen for oxygen?
“In water, white phosphorus reacts with oxygen within hours or days.”
That’s not a conversion of phosphine to phosphate.

Hold on. IIRC, the Genesis rock from the Moon has phosphorus in it. In which oxidation state?

Check: Na, Ca, Al, Si, O.
Perhaps: zinc, manganese or lithium, chromium (Cr), magnesium (Mg), cobalt (Co), manganese (Mn), scandium (Sc), titanium (Ti), vanadium (V) or iron (Fe)
Traces of: K–Rb–Ba–Y–Yb-La–Ce

Nope, I’m wrong.

Ahh, it’s not the anorthosite on the Moon that is high in phosphorus, it’s the basalt.

“Lunar differentiation history

“Lunar samples returned by the Apollo and Luna missions as well as the lunar meteorites broadly fall within two compositional categories: mare basalts and feldspathic (highlands) rocks. The mare basalts are a geochemically diverse group and are comprised of high-titanium (9–14 wt% TiO2), low-titanium (1–5 wt% TiO2), and very low-titanium (< 1 wt% TiO2) basaltic samples. Among the pristine igneous samples are the ferroan anorthosites (FANs) and magnesium-rich rocks. The latter are composed of subgroups of magnesian-suite, alkali-suite, granites/felsites, and potassium, rare earth element, and phosphorous-rich (KREEP) basalt and quartz monzodiorite rocks.”

I like the acronym “KREEP”.

“KREEP, an acronym built from the letters K (the atomic symbol for potassium), REE (rare-earth elements) and P (for phosphorus)”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KREEP

“The typical composition of KREEP includes about one percent, by mass, of potassium and phosphorus oxides. Most of potassium, phosphorus and rare-earth elements in KREEP basalts are incorporated in the grains of the phosphate minerals apatite and merrillite.”

So look up apatite and merrillite.

Apatite is Ca10(PO4)6(OH,F,Cl)2
Merrillite is Ca9NaMg(PO4)7
Both have a very high phosphate concentration.

So phosphorus of the PO4 component of Apatite is available in igneous form ready for the direct insertion into pre-biotic AMP and other nucleotides. Or to put it another way: nucleoside + apatite = nucleotide gives RNA and DNA.

An oxygen atmosphere is not necessary for the formation of phosphates because the Moon doesn’t have an oxygen atmosphere. Phosphorus in nature defaults to the highly oxygenated phosphate state even in the absence of free oxygen.

Or to put it another way, phosphorus is an excellent scavenger of atomic oxygen even when there is no oxygen in the atmosphere and no free water.

Good. that makes the origin of life simpler.

See also “https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/28/7/631/191931/Apatite-weathering-and-the-Phanerozoic-phosphorus?redirectedFrom=fulltext”

Research Article| July 01, 2000
Apatite weathering and the Phanerozoic phosphorus cycle
Michael W. Guidry et al.

Despite widespread debate in the literature, there is still considerable uncertainty concerning which nutrient ultimately controls marine net ecosystem production (NEP) over geologic time. Geochemical arguments suggest that phosphorus is the culprit. The weathering of apatite controls long-term phosphorus availability. If phosphorus is the ultimate controlling nutrient over geologic time scales, then long-term marine NEP is coupled to the release of phosphorus from apatite weathering. The most abundant apatite compositions found in nature are igneous fluorapatite. Sparse data exist on how these compositions dissolve under Earth’s surface conditions. … important parameters governing the phosphorus flux from apatite weathering and therefore marine NEP during Phanerozoic time.