Definition
The “soda ocean hypothesis” (SOH) stands for the concept of an early (i.e., in essence Precambrian) alkaline or even highly “alkaline ocean,” in analogy to the chemistry of the present-day “soda lakes.”
Soda ocean hypothesis (SOH)
The SOH has been advanced in biology (e.g., Snyder and Fox, 1975) for biochemical reasons before it was developed in earth sciences for geochemical reasons (Kempe and Degens, 1985; Kempe et al., 1989; Kempe and Kazmierczak, 1994).
In biology, the SOH rests on the observations that certain reactions considered essential for biogenesis would be favored by alkaline conditions (e.g., Abelson, 1966). One of those is the experimental observation that peptide bonds are more stable in alkaline than in acidic environments (e.g., Dose and Rauchfuss, 1972).
In earth sciences, the SOH rests on elemental mass balances, thermodynamic and kinetic arguments, and the analogy to modern soda lakes. These arguments are in short:
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Kempe, S., Kazmierczak, J. (2011). Soda Ocean Hypothesis. In: Reitner, J., Thiel, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geobiology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9212-1_192
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