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Planetary science

Earth's building blocks

Nature volume 541, pages 468–469 (2017)Cite this article

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Earth grew by the accretion of meteoritic material. High-precision isotopic data reveal how the composition of this material changed over time, forcing revision of models of our planet's formation. See Letters p.521 & p.525

For more than half a century, scientists have estimated the bulk chemical composition of Earth by comparison with its potential cosmic building blocks, as sampled by meteorites. In a conceptual breakthrough, on page 521, Dauphas1 uses the unique isotopic content of different types of meteorite to identify those that best represent these building blocks. The author also evaluates whether the material added to Earth during its formation changed over time. On page 525, Fischer-Gödde and Kleine2 show that not even the most recently accreted 0.5% of such material consisted of the type of meteorite long thought to be a major contributor to our planet's composition. This realization challenges our understanding of how Earth obtained its inventory of volatile elements and water.

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Figure 1: Probing Earth's formation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Richard W. Carlson is in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington DC 20015, USA.,

    Richard W. Carlson

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  1. Richard W. Carlson
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Correspondence to Richard W. Carlson.

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Carlson, R. Earth's building blocks. Nature 541, 468–469 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/541468a

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