Results of the initial studies of the hydrous alteration of amorphous Mg-SiO smokes indicate that although these materials readily adsorb water, the silicate structure is much more stable at 360¿K than expected. We have observed drastic changes in the relative absorption strengths of the 10- and 20-micron ''silicate'' features that appear quite rapidly at 750¿K; these observations might have important implications for the interpretation of cometary dust spectra. Observations of the development of 3.4-3.5 micron features possibly due to hydrocarbons in the spectra of processed Mg-SiO smokes have raised the exciting possibility that these amorphous condensates could act as Fischer-Tropsch type catalysts to produce hydrocarbons in the primitive solar nebula.