Earth, other planetary objects shared similar chemical origin

Ontario: Earth and other planetary objects formed in the early years of the Solar System share similar chemical origins, suggests a new finding.

Neodymium-142 (142Nd) is one of seven isotopes found in the chemical element neodymium which is widely distributed in the Earth's crust and most commonly used for magnets in commercial products like microphones and in-ear headphones.

In 2005, a small variation in 142Nd was detected between chondrites, which are stony meteorites, considered essential building blocks of the Earth and terrestrial rocks. 

These results were widely interpreted as an early differentiation of the interior of the Earth (including the crust and mantle) and these chondrites within the first 30 million years of its history.

The new results published by the journal Nature from Bouvier and Boyet showed that these differences in 142Nd were in fact already present during the growth of Earth and not introduced later, as was previously believed.

"How the Earth was formed and what type of planetary materials were part of that formation are issues that have puzzled generations of scientists. And these new isotopic measurements of meteorites provide exciting answers to these questions about our origins and what made the Earth so special," said Audrey Bouvier, Cosmochemist at the Western University. 

By using vastly improved measurement techniques, Bouvier and his colleague deduced that different meteoritical objects found in the Solar System incorporated the elements neodymium (Nd) and samarium (Sm) but with slightly different isotopic compositions. 

These variations in stable isotopes also show that the Solar System was not uniform during its earliest times and materials formed from previous generations of stars were incorporated in various proportions into the building blocks of planets.