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The petroleum hydrocarbons (oil like components and gas) and kerogen macromolecule are
abundant within the extraterrestrial atmospheric particles, as reservoir of lakes and oceans or in
hydrate forms, and within various carbonaceous chondrites (from asteroid belts, comets, and
planets/moons), and as solid residue within the planets or moons within and outside our Solar
System. Some of the important occurrences of petroleum hydrocarbons are: (a) the cup-like craters
and large lakes, in the atmosphere within two moons of Saturn (Hyperion and Titan), and possibly
also in Saturn's rings; (b) solid organic complexes with aromatic and aliphatic units within Iapetus
and many bodies in the outer Solar System; (c) abundance of water, methane, gas hydrates within
Mars; (d) remnant of nannofossils, kerogen-like geopolymers, and oil-like components within most
of the CM, C1, and C2 carbonaceous chondrites. These discoveries clearly rekindled the very old
debate over the biogenic or abiogenic origin on the genesis of these hydrocarbons. Several theories
are prevalent for the abiogenic origin of petroleum: formation of gas by mantle decompression and
thermal tsunami; various deep polymerization processes in the upper mantle gases through inorganic
processes; gases evolved from a hot deep biosphere in the mantle, migration through deep-seated
faults, and eventual polymerization of gases to heavier hydrocarbons. Most prevalent ideas of the
origin of petroleum pool within various stratigraphic intervals in the terrestrial environment are
overwhelmingly connected to the thermal degradation of macromolecular kerogen of biological
entities. The current publication illustrated both these views on the genesis of petroleum
hydrocarbons within carbonaceous chondrites that could be derived from other planets or moons
within our Solar System and the asteroid belts and beyond.
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