A new study conducted by researchers with the Carnegie Institution for Science suggests that the collision between Earth and another planet-sized object that eventually led to the formation of the Moon had another unexpected effect – the creation of alien blobs inside the Earth.
The study, published in Science Advances, focused on the materials that were left over from the suspected Mars-sized object, called Theia, when it collided with the Earth approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Researchers analyzed the materials using a sophisticated isotopic approach, taking samples of nitrogen and argon that had been trapped in different magma chambers over the past million years.
The isotopic analysis showed that the samples were made up of material that did not originate from the planet Earth but in fact, predated our planet. The results seemed to suggest that Theia’s “debris” had been scattered throughout the Earth after the catastrophic collision. That conclusion was backed up by further tests that found signs of nickel-iron-level elements that are not ordinarily found on Earth.
The study’s authors concluded that the blobs of material found inside the Earth likely originated from Theia and, given their authors’ estimate of their age, could be over 4.5 billion years old. This age estimate would make them “the most primordial material” found within our planet.
Since the study was conducted, further research has been proposed to determine what other effects the Theia collision had on our planet. One theory suggests the impact injected enough clouds of fine particles into the atmosphere to blot out the sun and cool the globe. While the elements of the blobs are still a mystery, it seems likely that they contain information relevant to the formation of our planet that has been hidden beneath the surface for billions of years.
This new study has opened up a world of possibilities in the field of planetary geochemistry, giving researchers new insights into the processes that created our planet and may be key to understanding the development of our own solar system and the origin of life on Earth.
