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PLANETARY CHEMISTRY

Sulfur evaporation in planetesimals

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 803–805 (2021)Cite this article

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Evaporative loss of sulfur from molten planetesimals can explain the sub-chondritic sulfur isotope composition of the bulk silicate mantle, suggesting an important role for planetesimal evaporation in establishing Earth’s volatile budget.

Major volatiles including sulfur, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon are abundant in the Solar System. However, they are strongly depleted on Earth and comparable rocky bodies. It remains unclear when and how Earth accreted its major volatile budget, and the origin of Earth’s major volatiles, though depleted, is profoundly important for understanding how the terrestrial planets formed and how Earth evolved into a habitable world. Isotopes may help as the bulk silicate Earth has a lighter sulfur isotope composition than chondritic meteorites, which are thought to be compositionally similar to Earth’s main building blocks1. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Wang et al.2 suggest that planetesimal evaporation plays an important role in shaping Earth’s volatile budget, according to examination of sulfur isotope fractionation during planetary core formation and evaporation.

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Fig. 1: Earth’s accretion from evaporating planetesimals.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Isotope Geochemistry, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China

    Yuan Li

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  1. Yuan Li
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Correspondence to Yuan Li.

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Li, Y. Sulfur evaporation in planetesimals. Nat. Geosci. 14, 803–805 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00847-5

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