For decades, scientists have sought to decipher the mystery of the origin of Earth’s essential elements and the reasons why some of them seem to be missing from our planet. However, a new study sheds light on this enigma and offers an unexpected perspective on the formation of Earth and Mars.

A team of scientists led by Assistant Professor Damanveer Grewal of Arizona State University (ASU), in collaboration with researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Rice University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has challenged traditional theories about the scarcity of moderately volatile elements (MVEs) on Earth and Mars.

These elements, including copper and zinc, play a crucial role in planetary chemistry and are often associated with fundamental components for life, such as water, carbon, and nitrogen. Understanding their origin is key to comprehending the conditions that made Earth a habitable world.

One fact that has long puzzled scientists is that Earth and Mars contain significantly fewer MVEs than primitive meteorites known as chondrites. This discrepancy has raised numerous questions about the processes that determined the chemical composition of planets. Until now, the most widely accepted theory suggested that these elements had not fully condensed in the early solar system or that they were lost during the differentiation of planetesimals, the fundamental building blocks of planet formation.

Copper zinc earth mystery
Planetesimal collisions during planet formation in the early solar system. Credit: ASU/Kouji Kanba

However, the new study, published in the journal Science Advances, proposes a different interpretation. By analyzing iron meteorites, which are the remnants of the metallic cores of early planetesimals, researchers have discovered that these objects from the inner solar system were surprisingly rich in moderately volatile elements. This finding indicates that the earliest planetary structures did not start with a scarcity of these elements but rather lost them later during a prolonged process of growth and cosmic collisions.

We have found conclusive evidence that the earliest planetesimals in the inner solar system contained a significant amount of these elements, explained Grewal. This discovery transforms our understanding of how planets acquired the components that make them up.

The research team also identified that many planetesimals from the inner solar system retained MVE levels similar to those of chondrites, meaning they were able to incorporate and retain them despite experiencing differentiation. This contradicts the idea that Earth and Mars originally formed with low levels of these elements. Instead, their disappearance would have occurred later due to a series of violent collisions that shaped the structure of the forming planets.

This new perspective redefines the understanding of planetary chemical evolution and suggests that the primordial building blocks that gave rise to Earth and Mars were not deficient in elements essential for life. Instead, their current scarcity is the result of subsequent catastrophic events. In previous research, Grewal had already studied the presence of nitrogen and water in the progenitor bodies of iron meteorites, and with this study, the focus has shifted to planetary cores and their volatile reserves.

The findings of this research not only have implications for understanding planetary formation in our solar system but could also be applied to the formation of planets in other star systems. By revealing that planetesimals may have initially possessed a composition rich in essential elements and that these were lost due to massive collisions, this study opens new possibilities for exploring habitable planets beyond Earth.

SOURCES

Arizona State University

Damanveer S. Grewal, Surjyendu Bhattacharjee, Bidong Zhang, Nicole X. Nie, Yoshinori Miyazaki. Enrichment of moderately volatile elements in first-generation planetesimals of the inner Solar System. Science Advances, 2025; 11 (6) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adq7848

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