Earth, you Wandering today may not be the planet born 4.5 billion years ago. Many scientists believe that in its infancy, the Earth collided with another world Marsit was not destroyed, but changed it, bringing the mass of that foreign object into the planet we know it. Recent research adds another layer of correlation to hypothetical cosmic events: scientists believe that without other bodies, the basic living conditions that appear on Earth may never appear.
A team from the University of Bern in Switzerland believes that because of its proximity to the sun, the original Earth that existed before this potential collision lost the variable elements necessary to form complex molecules. Their analysis shows that any hydrogen, carbon or sulfur evaporates in the first 3 million years after the formation of the original Earth. So if the Earth evolved without external input, it could be a drier world, more hostile to the development of complex life.
On the other hand, if a body formed outside the solar system (a area of rock that produces plenty of water and other volatile elements) then strikes a rocky planet like the original Earth, this could provide a strange chemical richness even after the initial aggressive evaporation process of Earth, which even today can provide the characteristics of our planet. This hypothesis coincides with other proposed proposals pointing to the alien origins of water, whereby the icy meteorites bombarded the original Earth and deposited their molecules.
In a published study Science Advancesthe researchers accurately measured the radioactive attenuation of two isotopes, manganese-53 to chromium-53 in terrestrial samples and meteorite fragments found on Earth. Since these space rocks form simultaneously with the sun and planets in the solar system, analyzing their traces and their composition is equivalent to opening a capsule of time from the past. By calculating the radioactive decay of manganese 53, the researchers revealed the time when the planet stopped exchanging materials with the environment and repairing the chemical elements it retained forever.
Their results show that Proto-Earth is sealed for its elements just 3 million years after the birth of the solar system. Furthermore, they found that the ratio of manganese to chromium in early planets was very low, suggesting that the original Earth was an extremely hot world that was able to drive away manganese. Since this element is less volatile than other more important elements such as hydrogen, carbon or sulfur, these elements must also escape.
“Thanks to our results, we know that the original Earth was originally a dry rocky planet. So it can be assumed that only the collision with Theia caused the volatile elements to cause the Earth and ultimately made life possible,” Pascal Kruttasch, the first author of the report, said at the University of Bern. Press release.
Theia is the name of the hypothetical institution, considered to be the name that hit the original Earth 4.5 billion years ago. The researchers believe that this impact will occur between 3 billion and 100 million years after the start of the solar system, which means that our planet’s ancestors are known to be a very arid world.
However, the arrival of water and other volatile elements does not mean the immediate emergence of life. Water alone does not produce lifespan, but it does produce a more favorable chemical and physical environment for the emergence of other molecules and with the biological processes they bring. In this sense, Theia sets the stage but does not ignite the spark.
This story originally appeared in wired español and has been translated into Spanish.
