Polar Ice–Auroral Environments: A Hypothesis for the Emergence of RNA-Based Protocells

Understanding how RNA-based life emerged requires identifying environments that could both generate chemically activated feedstocks and protect fragile informational polymers. We hypothesize that high-latitude environments in which auroral particle precipitation overlapped with transient or seasonal ice could have provided such a setting on the early Earth. In contrast to globally acting ultraviolet radiation, magnetically guided charged particles deposit energy in spatially localized regions of the atmosphere. Energetic-particle irradiation experiments show that weakly reducing N₂–CO₂–H₂O atmospheres containing minor reduced gases can generate carboxylic acids and hydrolysable amino-acid precursors, while ice can concentrate solutes and stabilize RNA chemistry. Order-of-magnitude estimates based on observed modern auroral energy fluxes and experimentally measured radiation-chemical yields indicate that this energy source is not chemically negligible. We propose that the spatial coupling of auroral chemical activation with ice-mediated concentration created recurrent polar reaction environments that may have favored downstream RNA chemistry and primitive compartmentalization. The hypothesis is explicitly testable by particle-irradiation, ice-chemistry, atmospheric-transport, and magnetospheric modeling experiments.