Overview
- ETH Zurich researchers report in Nature Astronomy that Earth’s building blocks came from a single inner‑solar‑system reservoir with outer input likely under 2 percent.
- The team compared ten isotope systems in meteorites to Earth, using statistical tools to track origins with atomic fingerprints from different‑mass versions of the same elements.
- They conclude Jupiter grew early and opened a gap in the young Sun’s dust and gas disk that blocked most outer material from drifting inward.
- The result implies Earth’s water and other easy‑to‑vaporize elements were already present in the inner disk, which the authors say they will now examine in follow‑up work.
- The analysis matches Earth’s makeup with Mars and Vesta and predicts similar compositions for Venus and Mercury, though no rock samples exist yet to test that.