Les exoplanètes récemment découvertes contribuent au développement d’un nouveau modèle qui offre des explications possibles à l’origine de certaines des caractéristiques déterminantes de la Terre, telles que l’abondance de l’eau.

De nouvelles recherches menées par Anat Shachar de l’Université des sciences Carnegie, ainsi que par Edward Young et Helk Schlichting de l’Université de Californie, Californie, suggèrent que l’eau de notre planète pourrait provenir de l’interaction entre les atmosphères riches en hydrogène et les mers d’eau en fusion. lave des premiers corps planétaires qui se sont formés à l’époque du début. étapes de formation de la terre. Leur recherche, qui pourrait faire la lumière sur l’origine de certaines des caractéristiques déterminantes de la Terre, a récemment été publiée dans la revue nature.

Historiquement, notre compréhension de la formation planétaire a été grandement influencée par l’exemple de notre propre système solaire. Malgré l’émergence de géantes gazeuses comme[{ » attribute= » »>Jupiter and Saturn still sparks discussions among scientists, there is a broad consensus that Earth and other terrestrial planets were formed from the accumulation of dust and gas that once orbited around our Sun in its youth.

As increasingly larger objects crashed into each other, the baby planetesimals that eventually formed Earth grew both larger and hotter, melting into a vast magma ocean due to the heat of collisions and radioactive elements. Over time, as the planet cooled, the densest material sank inward, separating Earth into three distinct layers—the metallic core, and the rocky, silicate mantle and crust.

An illustration showing how some Earth’s signature features, such as its abundance of water and its overall oxidized state could potentially be attributable to interactions between the molecular hydrogen atmospheres and magma oceans on the planetary embryos that comprised Earth’s formative years. Credit: Illustration by Edward Young/UCLA and Katherine Cain/Carnegie Institution for Science.

However, the explosion of exoplanet research over the past decade informed a new approach to modeling the Earth’s embryonic state.

“Exoplanet discoveries have given us a much greater appreciation of how common it is for just-formed planets to be surrounded by atmospheres that are rich in molecular hydrogen, H2, during their first several million years of growth,” Shahar explained. “Eventually these hydrogen envelopes dissipate, but they leave their fingerprints on the young planet’s composition.”

Using this information, the researchers developed new models for Earth’s formation and evolution to see if our home planet’s distinct chemical traits could be replicated.

Using a newly developed model, the Carnegie and UCLA researchers were able to demonstrate that early in Earth’s existence, interactions between the magma ocean and a molecular hydrogen proto-atmosphere could have given rise to some of Earth’s signature features, such as its abundance of water and its overall oxidized state.

The researchers used mathematical modeling to explore the exchange of materials between molecular hydrogen atmospheres and magma oceans by looking at 25 different compounds and 18 different types of reactions—complex enough to yield valuable data about Earth’s possible formative history, but simple enough to interpret fully.

Interactions between the magma ocean and the atmosphere in their simulated baby Earth resulted in the movement of large masses of hydrogen into the metallic core, the oxidation of the mantle, and the production of large quantities of water.

Even if all of the rocky material that collided to form the growing planet was completely dry, these interactions between the molecular hydrogen atmosphere and the magma ocean would generate copious amounts of water, the researchers revealed. Other water sources are possible, they say, but not necessary to explain Earth’s current state.

“This is just one possible explanation for our planet’s evolution, but one that would establish an important link between Earth’s formation history and the most common exoplanets that have been discovered orbiting distant stars, which are called Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes,” Shahar concluded.

This project was part of the interdisciplinary, multi-institution AEThER project, initiated and led by Shahar, which seeks to reveal the chemical makeup of the Milky Way galaxy’s most common planets—Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes—and to develop a framework for detecting signatures of life on distant worlds. Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this effort was developed to understand how the formation and evolution of these planets shape their atmospheres. This could—in turn—enable scientists to differentiate true biosignatures, which could only be produced by the presence of life, from atmospheric molecules of non-biological origin.

“Increasingly powerful telescopes are enabling astronomers to understand the compositions of exoplanet atmospheres in never-before-seen detail,” Shahar said. “AEThER’s work will inform their observations with experimental and modeling data that, we hope, will lead to a foolproof method for detecting signs of life on other worlds.”

Reference: “Earth shaped by primordial H2 atmospheres” by Edward D. Young, Anat Shahar and Hilke E. Schlichting, 12 April 2023, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05823-0

The study was funded, in part, by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.