Earth's building material comes entirely from the inner solar system

(CONNECT) Planetary researchers Paolo Sossi, Professor of Experimental Planetology, and Dan Bower from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) have come to a surprising conclusion: the material from which the Earth is formed originates entirely from the inner solar system. The corresponding study has now been published in the journal "Nature Astronomy".

"Our calculations make it clear: the Earth's building material comes from a uniform material reservoir," Sossi is quoted as saying in an ETH report. And Bower adds: "We were really surprised that the Earth is composed entirely of material from the inner solar system and is clearly different from all combinations of known meteorites."

Until now, planetary researchers had considered it likely that 6 to 40 percent of this material came from the outer solar system, i.e. from beyond Jupiter. For a long time, material from the outer solar system was considered necessary to bring volatile components such as water to Earth, the report continues. According to this, there must have been an exchange of material between the outer and inner solar system during the formation of the Earth.

This has now been refuted. For their study, the two ETH researchers used existing data on ten different isotope systems from meteorites and analyzed them in combination using a special statistical method. In previous studies, only two isotope systems were usually considered.

"Our study is actually a data science experiment," explains Sossi. "We have carried out statistical calculations that are hardly ever used in geochemistry, although they are a powerful tool." ce/mm