Earth’s carbon deficit caused by early loss through irreversible sublimation

Li, J. and Bergin, E. A. and Blake, G. A. and Ciesla, F. J. and Hirschmann, M. M. (2021) Earth’s carbon deficit caused by early loss through irreversible sublimation. Science Advances, 7 (14). Art. No. eabd3632. ISSN 2375-2548. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abd3632. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20210405-070916612

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Abstract

Carbon is an essential element for life, but its behavior during Earth’s accretion is not well understood. Carbonaceous grains in meteoritic and cometary materials suggest that irreversible sublimation, and not condensation, governs carbon acquisition by terrestrial worlds. Through astronomical observations and modeling, we show that the sublimation front of carbon carriers in the solar nebula, or the soot line, moved inward quickly so that carbon-rich ingredients would be available for accretion at 1 astronomical unit after the first million years. On the other hand, geological constraints firmly establish a severe carbon deficit in Earth, requiring the destruction of inherited carbonaceous organics in the majority of its building blocks. The carbon-poor nature of Earth thus implies carbon loss in its precursor material through sublimation within the first million years.

Item Type:

Article

Related URLs:

URL	URL Type	Description
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd3632	DOI	Article
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2021/03/29/7.14.eabd3632.DC1	Publisher	Supplementary Materials
https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.02702	arXiv	Discussion Paper

ORCID:

Author	ORCID
Li, J.	0000-0003-4761-722X
Bergin, E. A.	0000-0003-4179-6394
Blake, G. A.	0000-0003-0787-1610
Ciesla, F. J.	0000-0002-0093-065X
Hirschmann, M. M.	0000-0003-1213-6645

Additional Information:

© 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). Submitted 16 June 2020; Accepted 16 February 2021; Published 2 April 2021. We thank L. Nittler and an anonymous reviewer for critically reading the manuscript and helping us improve and clarify it. Funding: This research was supported by NSF grants AST 1344133, EAR 1763189, and AST1907653 and by the NASA Astrobiology Program, grant NNX15AT33A. Author contributions: J.L., E.A.B., G.A.B., F.J.C., and M.M.H. contributed equally to the project design and writing. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors.

Funders:

Funding Agency	Grant Number
NSF	AST-1344133
NSF	EAR-1763189
NSF	AST-1907653
NASA	NNX15AT33A

Issue or Number:

DOI:

10.1126/sciadv.abd3632

Record Number:

CaltechAUTHORS:20210405-070916612

Persistent URL:

https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20210405-070916612

Official Citation:

J. Li, E. A. Bergin, G. A. Blake, F. J. Ciesla, M. M. Hirschmann, Earth’s carbon deficit caused by early loss through irreversible sublimation. Sci. Adv. 7, eabd3632 (2021); DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd3632

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No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.

ID Code:

108615

Collection:

CaltechAUTHORS

Deposited By:

Tony Diaz

Deposited On:

07 Apr 2021 17:08

Last Modified:

12 Apr 2021 20:52

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