Polar Ice–Auroral Environments as Cradles of RNA-Based Protocells

Understanding how RNA-based life emerged requires identifying environments that both generate and sustain fragile informational polymers. We suggest that ice-covered polar environments subjected to auroral particle precipitation existed on the early Earth. In contrast to globally acting ultraviolet radiation, magnetically guided charged particles deposit energy in spatially localized high-latitude regions. When combined with the concentrating and stabilizing effects of ice, this mode of energy input may have promoted RNA formation, modification, and early evolutionary dynamics. Order-of-magnitude estimates indicate that auroral precipitation could generate 10¹⁹–10²⁰ reactive species m⁻² day⁻¹, sufficient to influence prebiotic chemistry within eutectic brines. We outline a hypothesis linking auroral radiation chemistry, ice-mediated regulation, RNA population dynamics, and spontaneous protocell formation, and describe explicit, testable implications of this framework.