According to a study by Carnegie’s Stephen Elardo and Anat Shahar, interactions between iron and nickel under the extreme pressures and temperatures similar to a planetary interior can help scientists understand the period in our Solar System’s youth when planets were forming and their cores were created.
The findings are published in journal Nature Geoscience.
One of the key to research Earth’s differentiation period is studying variations in iron isotopes in samples of ancient rocks and minerals from Earth, as well as from the Moon, and other planets or planetary bodies.
One outstanding mystery on this front has been the significant variation between iron isotope ratios found in samples of hardened lava that erupted from Earth’s upper mantle and samples from primitive meteorites, asteroids, the Moon, and Mars.
“There’s still a lot to learn about the geochemical evolution of planets. But laboratory experiments allow us to probe to depths we can’t reach and understand how planetary interiors formed and changed through time,” Elardo said.