Building of a Habitable Planet

Martin, Hervé; Albarède, Francis; Claeys, Philippe; Gargaud, Muriel; Marty, Bernard; Morbidelli, Alessandro; Pinti, Daniele L.

doi:10.1007/978-0-387-45083-4_4

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 166 publications

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“…Such processes have been invoked in discussions of the origins of the Earth's water (Maurette et al, 2000;Robert, 2003;Drake, 2005;Javoy, 2005;Martin et al, 2006;Marty and Yokochi, 2006;Zahnle et al, 2007), and of climatic changes owing to asteroidal contributions of sulphur dioxide to planetary atmospheres (e.g., Kring et al, 1996). However, scientific assessment of the complex process of volatile production is difficult.…”

Section: Extraterrestrial Contributions To Planetary Atmospheresmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The mass of asteroids delivered by the LHB to the Earth has been estimated to have been around 10 20 kg Gomes et al, 2005;Martin et al, 2006). The nature of this material is not completely clear, but a substantial carbonaceous chondritic component has been proposed (Gros et al, 1976;Hertogen et al, 1977), supported by noble gas evidence (Marty and Meibom, 2007) and the Nice model of the LHB (Gomes et al, 2005), in which the asteroid belt, presently dominated by C-group asteroids (Tholen, 1989;Mothé-Diniz et al, 2003), represents the source of the asteroidal component of the LHB, thereby implying a large carbonaceous component to the LHB.…”

Section: Duration Intensity and Composition Of The Lhbmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The contribution of sulphur dioxide from ablating micrometeorites to the atmospheres of Earth and Mars

Court

Sephton

2011

Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta

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Section: Extraterrestrial Contributions To Planetary Atmospheresmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Duration Intensity and Composition Of The Lhbmentioning

confidence: 99%

The contribution of sulphur dioxide from ablating micrometeorites to the atmospheres of Earth and Mars

Court

Sephton

2011

Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta

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“…The rate of delivery of cosmic dust was much greater during and before the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) at 3.8-4.0 Ga, estimated at around 2.7-7.2 Â 10 20 kg between 4.4 and 3.8 Ga (Kring and Cohen, 2002;Gomes et al, 2005;Martin et al, 2006). Assuming again that 4% of the mass of this flux is of carbonaceous chondritic composition (Kallemeyn and Wasson, 1981), and that Murchison is representative of the carbonaceous chondritic infall, then total yields of water and carbon dioxide of 5-20 Â 10 17 and 4-10 Â 10 17 kg, respectively, can be calculated upon atmospheric ablation of infalling material.…”

Section: Implications For Planetary Volatile Budgetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such contributions are pertinent to concepts such as the so-called Faint Young Sun paradox, describing the uncertainty regarding the mechanism by which liquid water was maintained on the surfaces of the early Earth and Mars (Sagan and Mullen, 1972;Kasting and Howard, 2006;Martin et al, 2006;Zahnle et al, 2007). It has been proposed that volcanism delivered sufficient greenhouse gases into the atmospheres (e.g., Kasting, 1987;von Paris et al, 2008); however, exogenous material may have also been an important contributor of greenhouse gases to planetary atmospheres before and during the high delivery rates of extraterrestrial material experienced during the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) (e.g., Gomes et al, 2005;Martin et al, 2006;Zahnle et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meteorite ablation products and their contribution to the atmospheres of terrestrial planets: An experimental study using pyrolysis-FTIR

Court

Sephton

2009

Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta

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“…A standard theory for the formation of the Earth-Moon system (Martin et al 2006), is that (Snyder et al 2000, Ryder 2002, and the outermost lunar crust must therefore have been solid since that time. Almost all the craters we see on the Moon today were, however, formed during the narrow LHB period from ≈ 3.9 Ga to 3.8 Ga ago.…”

Section: Iridium and The Earth-moon Formationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Earth–Moon system during the late heavy bombardment period – Geochemical support for impacts dominated by comets

Jørgensen¹,

Appel²,

Hatsukawa³

et al. 2009

Icarus

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The solid planets assembled 4.57 Gyr ago during a period of less than 100 Myr, but the bulk of the impact craters we see on the inner planets formed much later, in a narrow time interval between 3.8 and 3.9 Gyr ago, during the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB).It is not certain what caused the LHB, and it has not been well known whether the impactors were comets or asteroids, but our present study lend support to the idea that it was comets.Due to the Earth's higher gravity, the impactors will have hit the Earth with ∼twice the energy density that they hit the Moon, and the bombardment will have continued on Earth longer than on the Moon. All solid surface of the Earth will have been completely covered with craters by the end of the LHB.However, almost nothing of the Earth's crust from even the end of this epoch, is preserved today. One of the very few remnants, though, is exposed as the Isua greenstone belt (IGB) and nearby areas in Western Greenland. During a field expedition to Isua, we sampled three types of metasedimentary rocks, deposited ∼3.8 billion years ago, that contain information about the sedimentary river load from larger areas of surrounding land surfaces (mica-schist and turbidites) and of the contemporaneous seawater (BIF). Our samples show evidence of the LHB impacts that took place on Earth, by an average of a seven times enrichment (150 ppt) in iridium compared to present day ocean crust (20 ppt). The clastic sediments show slightly higher enrichment than the chemical sediments, which may be due to contamination from admixtures of mafic (proto-crustal) sources.We show that this enrichment is in agreement with the lunar cratering rate and a corresponding extraterrestrial LHB contribution to the Earth's Hadean-Eoarchean crust, provided the bulk of the influx was cometary (i.e., of high velocity and low in CI abundance), but not if the impactors were meteorites (i.e. had velocities and abundances similar to present day Earth crossing asteroids). Our study is a first direct indication of the nature of the LHB impactors, and the first to find an agreement between the LHB lunar cratering rate and the Earth's early geochemical record (and the corresponding lunar record). The LHB comets that delivered the iridium we see at Isua will at the same time have delivered the equivalent of a ∼1 km deep ocean, and we explain why one should expect a cometary ocean to become roughly the size of the Earth's present-day ocean, not only in terms of depth but also in terms of the surface area it covers. The total impacting mass on the Earth during the LHB will have been ∼1000 t/m 2 .

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Building of a Habitable Planet

Cited by 7 publications

References 166 publications

The contribution of sulphur dioxide from ablating micrometeorites to the atmospheres of Earth and Mars

The contribution of sulphur dioxide from ablating micrometeorites to the atmospheres of Earth and Mars

Meteorite ablation products and their contribution to the atmospheres of terrestrial planets: An experimental study using pyrolysis-FTIR

The Earth–Moon system during the late heavy bombardment period – Geochemical support for impacts dominated by comets

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