In a new study released in Nature this week, researchers state that Earth formed within just 3 million years. That’s notably faster than previous estimates placing the timeline up to 100 million years.
The authors assert that this rapid genesis occurred through a theory called pebble accretion. The general idea, according to co-author and cosmochemist Martin Bizzarro, is that planets are born in a disk of dust and gas. When they reach a certain size, they rapidly attract those pebbles like a vacuum cleaner. Some of those pebbles are icy and could provide a water supply to Earth, thought of as pebble snow.
The team determined the time scale of Earth’s formation by looking at silicon isotopes from more than 60 meteorites and planetary bodies in the vicinity of Earth, which represent the rubble leftover after planet formation. Silicon is a main element in rocks and a vital building block of a planet, akin to what carbon is for life. Because it’s so abundant in the universe, it is produced easily and commonly and can act as a good tracer for planetary formations.
Birger Schmitz, an astrogeologist at Lund University who was not involved in the research, said these results are “very compelling” and could shift how we think about our planet’s formation.Article content
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