What sustains life on Earth turns out to originate from the death of a type of planet that was incomplete in the “dark zone” of the Solar System.
A study led by Heidelberg University (Germany) has provided a surprising glimpse into the dawn of the Solar System, when Earth completed the final step in its formation: acquiring water – one of the most crucial conditions for life.
According to SciTech Daily, a meteorite named “Flensburg” fell to Earth on September 12, 2019, and has “told a story.”
The Flensburg meteorite holds secrets about Earth’s formation period – (Photo: Carsten Jonas).
Flensburg is a rare type of carbon chondrite meteorite, containing minerals that can only form in the presence of water.
It points to a special parent body that came into existence shortly after the Solar System was formed.
This body is referred to as a “planetary microbody”, which no longer exists today.
For a long time, there has been a theory suggesting that these planetary microbodies were the precursors to today’s planets: They continuously collided, shattered, and then coalesced until they formed large and stable masses, eventually becoming actual planets.
In the early days of the Solar System, these planetary microbodies resided in the dark regions at the edge of the system, where they could preserve bound water in their crystals.
Widely accepted models indicate that during this time, Jupiter had not yet fully formed and had not moved to its current position, creating an insurmountable gap between the inner and outer regions of the Solar System.
As a result, small objects from the frigid outer regions could easily move deep inward.
During the accumulation process from the protoplanetary disk, our Earth absorbed some of the “stray” debris from the demise of those water-rich planetary microbodies.
With its favorable position in the habitable zone of the star system, Earth was able to retain water in a liquid state.
According to a publication in Scientific Reports, this discovery not only clarifies Earth’s history but also brings new hopes for a “second Earth.”
Because the origins of planetary microbodies in other star systems will also adhere to the same physical laws as our Solar System, scientists believe there could be planets forming in a manner similar to Earth in other regions of space.
This would enable them to meet the prerequisites for the origin of life, according to Professor Mario Trieloff, a co-author of the study.
