It was last year that researchers from Sweden and Denmark suggested in a study in the scientific journal Science Advances that our planet was formed by pebbles that were sucked together into a celestial body for millions of years. According to this “pebble theory”, as it has come to be called in the scientific world, our world was initially a baby planet consisting of ice and coal. When it grew to about one percent of its current mass, the atmosphere became warm enough for the ice to evaporate and organic molecules with carbon to be destroyed. Then the earth began to attract millimeter-sized pebbles from different parts of the solar system, until these ran out. With this groundbreaking explanation for the origin of the earth, scientists were able to show that our planet came into being much faster than previously thought.
– Our model shows that the earth was formed over five million years. Then the pebbles ran out. Five million years may not sound like a lightning-fast process, but it is a much shorter time than the 30 to 100 million years that the research world has previously counted on, said astronomy professor Anders Johansen, who is affiliated with Lund University and the University of Copenhagen, in a press release last year.
Could have become super earth
Now a research team from Lund, Copenhagen and Zhejiang in China has published a new study that sheds new light on space dust and its role in the creation of the earth, while strengthening the previous “pebble theory”.
“Through advanced computer simulations, we can establish that the earth was formed by a combination of pebbles and dust from supernova explosions in the outer solar system, as well as dust from the inner solar system that contained much less dust from supernovae,” says Lund professor Anders Johansen in a press release.
Astronomers conclude that the planet Jupiter has not stopped as much dust from supernovae, that is, exploding stars, as the scientific world previously thought.
– Despite its size, the abyss planet may not have blocked all dust particles from the outer solar system. A considerable amount has progressed and contributed to the formation of the earth, says Michiel Lambrechts, astronomy researcher at Lund University, in a press release.
At the same time, Jupiter has been crucial to life on earth. Scientists believe that without that planet, the Earth would most likely have evolved into a so-called super-Earth with significantly greater mass and an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, where nothing can live.
The new findings about the origin of the earth can help us understand how much water and carbon – or, in other words, the conditions for the origin of life – a planet is born with.
– By learning more about these complex processes, we gain an increased understanding of how it goes when habitable planets are also formed around other stars in the universe, places that can potentially carry life, says Anders Johansen.
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