GENESIS: A Hadean Earth Titan-Mass Impact Model — A Quantitative Hypothesis for Earth's Volatile Budget, Atmospheric Reset, and Post-Impact Prebiotic Chemistry (including open-source software)

Abstract

GENESIS: A Hadean Earth Titan-Mass Impact Model — A Quantitative Hypothesis for Earth’s Volatile Budget, Atmospheric Reset, and Post Impact Prebiotic Chemistry An Inverse-Calibrated Framework, an Exploratory Technical Companion and Working Paper — Expanded Revision Chris Tsirkas, Independent researcher christos.a.tsirkas@gmail.com• https://github.com/ChristosTsirkas • https://independent.academia.edu/ChrisTsirkas • https://zenodo.org/search?q=metadata.creators.person_or_org.name%3A%22Tsirkas%2C%20Chris%22&l=list&p=1&s=10&sort=bestmatch • https://play.google.com/store/info/name/Chris_Tsirkas?id=11h0_kxvyp • https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19154997.Chris_Tsirkas Code and data: https://github.com/ChristosTsirkas/genesis-earth-hadean-titan-impact-model License: This paper and its original scholarly expression—including prose, analysis, figures, tables, and conclusions—are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt those materials, including commercially, provided that you give appropriate credit, link to the license, and indicate changes. This grant covers only original material for which the copyright holder has rights to grant it. Quoted, cited, or otherwise identified third-party material remains subject to its own terms. Accompanying material Theatrical play libretto: https://github.com/ChristosTsirkas/genesis-earth-hadean-titan-impact-model/blob/main/docs/GENESIS%20%E2%80%94%20Complete%20Theatrical%20Play%20%E2%80%94%20Musical%20Score%20%E2%80%94%20Composer%20Dossier.pdfAdditional, computer-generated support files for the music of this project: https://github.com/ChristosTsirkas/genesis-earth-hadean-titan-impact-model/tree/main/music A rendered realization of the “GENESIS” musical score is also available online, allowing the musical component to be heard https://soundcloud.com/chris-t-331652374 "GENESIS: A Hadean Earth Titan-Mass Impact Model" presents a quantitative, inverse-calibrated and computationally testable hypothesis for the possible consequences of a Titan-mass, volatile-rich giant impact on the Hadean Earth at approximately 4.1 billion years ago. The paper treats the proposed collision explicitly as a working hypothesis rather than an established historical event and develops a coupled framework in which the impact must satisfy physical, dynamical, atmospheric, isotopic, geochemical and chemical constraints simultaneously. The study begins with the impact itself, calculating the impactor mass, impact velocity, kinetic energy, gravitational binding-energy scale, water inventory, volatile delivery and equivalent atmospheric/surface pressure. It then follows the consequences of the event through volatile retention and partitioning, ejecta loss, silicate–volatile separation, magma-ocean and atmospheric thermal evolution, radiative cooling, atmospheric escape, hydrogen loss, nitrogen production and removal, isotope mixing and fractionation, and noble-gas survival. The framework therefore treats the proposed event not simply as a mechanism for delivering water, but as a complete post-impact mass-balance problem in which excessive delivery can be as serious a constraint as insufficient delivery. The computational framework contains reduced-order numerical models for delivery screening, impact and volatile partitioning, thermal evolution, atmospheric escape and isotope evolution, noble-gas retention, and post-impact chemistry. The paper documents Monte Carlo delivery calculations, reduced-order impact-partition calculations, thermal-cooling calculations, escape and isotope calculations, finite-feedstock chemical grids, calibration runs, reproducibility runs, sensitivity and robustness tests, and the subsequent development of genuine N-body transport infrastructure. The N-body component uses REBOUND with IAS15 and MERCURIUS, while the hydrodynamic campaign is prepared for SWIFT/SPH calculations. A deterministic 96-case SPH campaign matrix is generated over impactor mass, impact velocity, impact angle, water fraction and particle count for subsequent high-performance-computing simulations. The atmospheric and chemical part of the framework connects the impact-generated thermal and pressure history with hydrogen, nitrogen, ammonia, water, redox chemistry and atmospheric escape. The chemistry module includes finite-reagent and equilibrium/quench treatment of N₂/NH₃/HCN chemistry, hydrogen production, nitrogen speciation and redox evolution. The calculations investigate how atmospheric escape can simultaneously affect nitrogen, hydrogen and noble gases, while isotope evolution is used as an additional constraint rather than as an isolated fitting target. The paper also extends the model into geochemistry and prebiotic chemistry. Geochemical constraints include mantle and crustal volatile reservoirs, nitrogen isotopes, noble gases, Hadean zircon evidence and the thermal resetting of the early Earth. The prebiotic component examines impact-generated reducing environments, steam, H₂, CO, NH₃, metal–water and metal–CO₂ reactions, hydrothermal circulation, redox gradients, nitriles, carbonyl compounds, ammonium chemistry, HCN formation and related C–N reaction networks. The paper deliberately distinguishes chemical plausibility from biological inference: it does not claim that the proposed impact caused the origin of life. The numerical work is explicitly separated into completed calculations, exploratory reduced-order results, software and pipeline validation, and future submission-grade simulations. The current results include local Monte Carlo screening, analytical volatile-partition calculations, calibrated thermal trajectories, atmospheric escape and isotope calculations, finite-feedstock chemistry calculations, reproducibility and robustness runs, and executable N-body validation infrastructure. The full planetary-instability ensembles, production-scale SPH impact simulations, fully resolved atmosphere–magma-ocean and multi-species escape calculations, and experimentally constrained high-pressure shock-chemistry programme remain proposed validation stages rather than completed evidence. The central scientific objective is therefore to determine whether a physically admissible region of parameter space exists in which impact dynamics, volatile retention, atmospheric evolution, thermal history, nitrogen and hydrogen chemistry, isotope evolution, noble-gas survival, geochemical constraints and post-impact chemical environments can all be satisfied simultaneously. The framework is designed to expose failure conditions as well as successful numerical intersections, making the hypothesis subject to progressive dynamical, hydrodynamic, chemical, isotopic and geological testing. The accompanying computational repository provides the executable code, configurations, calibration history, intermediate outputs, archived numerical results and reproducibility material used for the reduced-order calculations and computational extensions. The repository is intended to allow readers to inspect the implementation and numerical assumptions rather than relying only on the values reported in the manuscript. The scientific work forms part of the broader GENESIS project and is accompanied by a separate theatrical and musical realization, “GENESIS — Complete Theatrical Play — Musical Score — Composer Dossier”. This companion volume contains the complete 544-verse theatrical libretto in Ancient Attic Greek and English, its synchronized musical score, the Composer Dossier documenting the compositional and structural system, and the project presentation. The theatrical and musical work is an independent artistic transformation of the scientific conception and is not presented as scientific evidence. The musical component is also available as a rendered realization online. The scientific paper, computational framework, theatrical work, musical score, Composer Dossier and recorded music are separately accessible components of the wider GENESIS project, while the scientific paper and computational repository remain the authoritative record of the project's scientific assumptions, calculations, results, limitations and proposed validation programme.