There's a growing body of evidence showing that Earth formed more quickly than thought. And it didn't wait for asteroids to bring its water.
Si is a major component of planets like Earth, and is the second most abundant element in the crust, second only to oxygen. Scientists track the distribution of these chemicals from their time of formation in a supernova or other massive dying star, through their decay chains, into their presence in Solar System bodies. The researchers examined samples from more than 60 different meteorites and planetary bodies and analyzed their isotopic compositions.
The research relies on the Solar System’s nucleosynthetic isotopic variability. Scientists use this method to try and trace the development of planets in the Solar System by measuring the presence and abundance of isotopes in different objects. Silicone is an abundant refractory element in Solar System bodies that can serve as a nucleosynthetic tracer. Using it to track the formation of Earth is a significant step forward, according to the authors.
The authors’ evidence showed that once young Earth reached a certain size from dust accumulation, it ‘vacuumed’ up more and more dust from the protoplanetary disk. “There was a disk around the young sun where the planets were growing. The disk was filled with small dust particles. Once a planet reaches a certain size, it sort of acts like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up all that dust very quickly. And that makes it grow to the size of Earth in just a few million years,” says Ph.D.
“People have debated how planets form for a long time. One theory is that planets are formed by the gradual collision of bodies, progressively increasing their size over 100 million years. In this scenario, the presence of water on Earth would need a sort of chance event,” says Associate Professor Martin Schiller, who is also behind the new study.frost line
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