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Delivery of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur to the silicate Earth by a giant impact

Earth’s status as the only life-sustaining planet is a result of the timing and delivery mechanism of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), sulfur (S), and hydrogen (H). On the basis of their isotopic signatures, terrestrial volatiles are thought to have derived from carbonaceous chondrites, while the isotopic...

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Autores principales: Grewal, Damanveer S., Dasgupta, Rajdeep, Sun, Chenguang, Tsuno, Kyusei, Costin, Gelu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6357864/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30746449
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau3669
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author Grewal, Damanveer S.
Dasgupta, Rajdeep
Sun, Chenguang
Tsuno, Kyusei
Costin, Gelu
author_facet Grewal, Damanveer S.
Dasgupta, Rajdeep
Sun, Chenguang
Tsuno, Kyusei
Costin, Gelu
author_sort Grewal, Damanveer S.
collection PubMed
description Earth’s status as the only life-sustaining planet is a result of the timing and delivery mechanism of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), sulfur (S), and hydrogen (H). On the basis of their isotopic signatures, terrestrial volatiles are thought to have derived from carbonaceous chondrites, while the isotopic compositions of nonvolatile major and trace elements suggest that enstatite chondrite–like materials are the primary building blocks of Earth. However, the C/N ratio of the bulk silicate Earth (BSE) is superchondritic, which rules out volatile delivery by a chondritic late veneer. In addition, if delivered during the main phase of Earth’s accretion, then, owing to the greater siderophile (metal loving) nature of C relative to N, core formation should have left behind a subchondritic C/N ratio in the BSE. Here, we present high pressure-temperature experiments to constrain the fate of mixed C-N-S volatiles during core-mantle segregation in the planetary embryo magma oceans and show that C becomes much less siderophile in N-bearing and S-rich alloys, while the siderophile character of N remains largely unaffected in the presence of S. Using the new data and inverse Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the impact of a Mars-sized planet, having minimal contributions from carbonaceous chondrite-like material and coinciding with the Moon-forming event, can be the source of major volatiles in the BSE.
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spelling pubmed-63578642019-02-11 Delivery of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur to the silicate Earth by a giant impact Grewal, Damanveer S. Dasgupta, Rajdeep Sun, Chenguang Tsuno, Kyusei Costin, Gelu Sci Adv Research Articles Earth’s status as the only life-sustaining planet is a result of the timing and delivery mechanism of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), sulfur (S), and hydrogen (H). On the basis of their isotopic signatures, terrestrial volatiles are thought to have derived from carbonaceous chondrites, while the isotopic compositions of nonvolatile major and trace elements suggest that enstatite chondrite–like materials are the primary building blocks of Earth. However, the C/N ratio of the bulk silicate Earth (BSE) is superchondritic, which rules out volatile delivery by a chondritic late veneer. In addition, if delivered during the main phase of Earth’s accretion, then, owing to the greater siderophile (metal loving) nature of C relative to N, core formation should have left behind a subchondritic C/N ratio in the BSE. Here, we present high pressure-temperature experiments to constrain the fate of mixed C-N-S volatiles during core-mantle segregation in the planetary embryo magma oceans and show that C becomes much less siderophile in N-bearing and S-rich alloys, while the siderophile character of N remains largely unaffected in the presence of S. Using the new data and inverse Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the impact of a Mars-sized planet, having minimal contributions from carbonaceous chondrite-like material and coinciding with the Moon-forming event, can be the source of major volatiles in the BSE. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2019-01-23 /pmc/articles/PMC6357864/ /pubmed/30746449 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau3669 Text en Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Grewal, Damanveer S.
Dasgupta, Rajdeep
Sun, Chenguang
Tsuno, Kyusei
Costin, Gelu
Delivery of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur to the silicate Earth by a giant impact
title Delivery of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur to the silicate Earth by a giant impact
title_full Delivery of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur to the silicate Earth by a giant impact
title_fullStr Delivery of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur to the silicate Earth by a giant impact
title_full_unstemmed Delivery of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur to the silicate Earth by a giant impact
title_short Delivery of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur to the silicate Earth by a giant impact
title_sort delivery of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur to the silicate earth by a giant impact
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6357864/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30746449
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau3669
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