Water reached the earth towards the final stages of its development To become a planet from dust and gas, what geologists call late accretion.
It is the hypothesis that supports a new study published in the scientific journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica acts by a team led by a scientist from the University of Rutgers-New Brunswick.
Scientists try to find out when the constituent materials necessary for life appeared, so that they can understand how and when it began. According to current scientific knowledge, at least three necessary ingredients are essential to implement life. These are water, energy and a soup of organic chemicals known as chnops (scientific abbreviation for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur).
“When the water arrived to the planet, it is one of the main questions without response in planetary science”said in a statement Katherine Bermingham, deputy professor of the Department of Earth Sciences and planetary of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Rutgers and main author of the study. “If we know the answer, we can delimit better when and how life was developed.”
Bermingham is cosmogeochemistry, a scientist who studies the chemical composition of matter in the solar system, particularly focusing on the origin and evolution of the solar system and its rocky planets through the analysis of terrestrial rocks and extraterrestrial materials such as meteorites.
Using thermal ionization mass spectrometry and a new analytical method developed by the equipment, Bermingham and their colleagues studied the isotopes of the molybdenum element. An isotope is a form of an element with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. This allows you to share the same chemical properties while it has a different atomic mass.
Katherine Bermingham is a cosmogeochemistry, a scientist who studies the chemical composition of matter in the solar system.
“The isotopic composition of molybdenum of the Rocks of the Earth provides us with a special window to the events that occurred around the moment of the final formation of the Earth’s nucleus, when the planet was gathering the last 10% to 20% of the material. It is believed that this period coincides with the formation of the moon“Bermingham said.
They extracted molybdenum of samples of meteorites obtained from the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian Institute. The scientific community has divided meteorites into two general groups: the first, “CC”, with constituent elements that suggest that meteorites were formed in the external solar system, presumably wet. The second group, “NC”, has characteristics that indicate that their meteorites were formed in the interior solar system, presumably dry. This study focused on samples that belong to the NC group.
They compared the isotopic composition of molybdenum of these meteorites with rocks from the land of Greenland, South Africa, Canada, the United States and Japan collected by field geologists. In general, it is considered that the molybdenum present in these rocks was added to the Earth During the time the moon was formedwhich is when the Final core training. It was precisely at that time when the team wanted to look for the origin of the water.
A fragment of Iron Meteorite Campo del Cielo, one of the samples measured in the study./ Katherine Bermingham.
“Once we gathered the different samples and measure their isotopic compositions, we compare the firms of meteorites with those of the rocks to see if there was a similarity or a difference,” Bermingham said. “And from there, we get conclusions.”
The analyzes showed that the rocks of the land they studied were more similar to meteorites from the interior solar system (NC) than to meteorites from the external solar system (CC).
“We have to find out what part of our solar system came and moved the basic components of the earth (dust and gas) when that happened,” Bermingham said. “That is the necessary information to understand when the stage was prepared to start life.”
Since the chemical composition of the terrestrial rocks that studied coincides with that of the alleged meteorites of the Inner Solar System (NC), the scientists concluded that The Earth had not received as much water from the Moon formation event as previously thought. The finding is significant, Bermingham said, because a popular theory about the water supply is that a significant amount of the earth’s water was added when the moon was formed.
This investigation, however, showed that a substantial amount of water probably did not arrive during this period of growth. On the other hand, the data supports the interpretation that the water reached the earth in smaller portions after the moon was formed, much later during the formation of the earth.
“Our results suggest that the Moon formation event was not an important water supplier, unlike what had previously been thought,” Bermingham said. “These findings, however, allow a small amount of water to be added after the final formation of the nucleus, during what is called late accretion.”
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