  Research over the past four decades has shown a rich variety of complex
organic molecular content in some meteorites. This current study is an attempt
to gain a better insight into the thermal conditions experienced by these
molecules inside meteorites during atmospheric entry. In particular, we wish to
understand possible chemical processes that can occur during entry and that
might have had an effect on complex organic or prebiotic species that were
delivered in this way to the early Earth. A simulation was written in Fortran
to model heating by the shock generated during entry and the subsequent thermal
diffusion inside the body of a meteorite. Experimental data was used for the
thermal parameters of several types of meteorites, including iron-nickel and
several classes of chondrites. A Sutton-Graves model of stagnation-point
heating was used to calculate peak surface temperatures and an explicit
difference formula was used to generate thermal diffusion profiles for both
chondrites and iron-nickel type meteorites. Results from the simulation show
pyrolytic temperature penetration to a depth of ca. 0.5 to 1 cm.
Non-dissociative warming of meteorite interiors penetrates further to ca. 4 cm.
These results support the findings that extraterrestrial delivery is a viable
option for prebiotic molecular "seeding" of a planet.
