{"id":25637,"date":"2021-01-12T17:22:02","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T16:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=25637"},"modified":"2021-01-12T17:22:03","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T16:22:03","slug":"nickel-isotopic-evidence-for-late-stage-accretion-of-mercury-like-differentiated-planetary-embryos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=25637","title":{"rendered":"Nickel isotopic evidence for late-stage accretion of Mercury-like differentiated planetary embryos<span class=\"badge-status\" style=\"background:#787878\">OPEN ACCESS<\/span>&nbsp;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Shui-Jiong Wang, Wenzhong Wang, Jian-Ming Zhu, Zhongqing Wu, Jingao Liu, Guilin Han, Fang-Zhen Teng, Shichun Huang, Hongjie Wu, Yujian Wang, Guangliang Wu &amp; Weihan Li<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nature Communications, Volume 12, Article number: 294 (2021)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-020-20525-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>LINK (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-020-20525-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>PDF (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justiyf-text\">&#8220;Earth\u2019s habitability is closely tied to its late-stage accretion, during which impactors delivered the majority of life-essential volatiles. However, the nature of these final building blocks remains poorly constrained. Nickel (Ni) can be a useful tracer in characterizing this accretion as most Ni in the bulk silicate Earth (BSE) comes from the late-stage impactors. Here, we apply Ni stable isotope analysis to a large number of meteorites and terrestrial rocks, and find that the BSE has a lighter Ni isotopic composition compared to chondrites. Using first-principles calculations based on density functional theory, we show that core-mantle differentiation cannot produce the observed light Ni isotopic composition of the BSE. Rather, the sub-chondritic Ni isotopic signature was established during Earth\u2019s late-stage accretion, probably through the Moon-forming giant impact. We propose that a highly reduced sulfide-rich, Mercury-like body, whose mantle is characterized by light Ni isotopic composition, collided with and merged into the proto-Earth during the Moon-forming giant impact, producing the sub-chondritic Ni isotopic signature of the BSE, while delivering sulfur and probably other volatiles to the Earth.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shui-Jiong Wang, Wenzhong Wang, Jian-Ming Zhu, Zhongqing Wu, Jingao Liu, Guilin Han, Fang-Zhen Teng, Shichun Huang, Hongjie Wu, Yujian Wang, Guangliang Wu &amp; Weihan Li Nature Communications, Volume 12, Article number: 294 (2021) LINK (OPEN&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,131,112,115,73],"tags":[1851,4819,2219,80,1229,5809,1857,1665,5808,5807,369],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25638,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25637\/revisions\/25638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}