Rice: Planetary Collision That Formed the Moon Made Life Possible on Earth

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Rice: Planetary Collision That Formed the Moon Made Life Possible on Earth

Post by bystander » Thu Jan 24, 2019 6:35 pm

Planetary Collision That Formed the Moon Made Life Possible on Earth
Rice University | 2019 Jan 23

Study: Planetary delivery explains enigmatic features of Earth’s carbon and nitrogen

Most of Earth’s essential elements for life — including most of the carbon and nitrogen in you — probably came from another planet.

Earth most likely received the bulk of its carbon, nitrogen and other life-essential volatile elements from the planetary collision that created the moon more than 4.4 billion years ago, according to a new study by Rice University petrologists ...

The evidence was compiled from a combination of high-temperature, high-pressure experiments in Dasgupta’s lab, which specializes in studying geochemical reactions that take place deep within a planet under intense heat and pressure.

In a series of experiments, study lead author and graduate student Damanveer Grewal gathered evidence to test a long-standing theory that Earth’s volatiles arrived from a collision with an embryonic planet that had a sulfur-rich core.

The sulfur content of the donor planet’s core matters because of the puzzling array of experimental evidence about the carbon, nitrogen and sulfur that exist in all parts of the Earth other than the core. ...

Delivery of Carbon, Nitrogen, and Sulfur to the Silicate Earth by a Giant Impact ~ Damanveer S. Grewal et al
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