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Earth science

The extraterrestrial wedding ring

Nature volume 406, pages 359–360 (2000)Cite this article

A topic of hearty debate amongst geochemists is the origin of the so-called highly siderophile (‘iron loving’) elements in the Earth's mantle. This is a group of elements that includes two of our most highly prized commodities, gold and platinum. Put simply, there isn't much of them in the mantle, but there is a lot more than might be expected. In the paper on page 396 of this issue1, Holzheid et al. lend weight to a theory that invokes an extraterrestrial explanation for this puzzle.

Apart from gold and platinum, the siderophile elements include iridium, osmium, palladium, rhenium, rhodium and ruthenium. They are characterized by their extreme affinity for metal (iron) magmas, and have a 10,000 times greater preference to partition into these magmas than the silicate magmas from which the mantle is largely formed. Consequently, during primary differentiation of the rocky planets into cores and mantles, these elements were almost totally concentrated in the metallic cores. In the Earth, for instance, about 99.99% of the planet's budget of highly siderophile elements resides in the core (which is not, alas, accessible for mining).

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  1. the Department of Geology University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 20742 , USA

    Richard J. Walker

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  1. Richard J. Walker
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Correspondence to Richard J. Walker.

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J. Walker, R. The extraterrestrial wedding ring. Nature 406, 359–360 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35019239

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