The Earth formed from local building blocks
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 30-Mar-2026 12:16 ET (30-Mar-2026 16:16 GMT/UTC)
The chemical composition of meteorites and asteroids acts as a kind of fingerprint, providing information about the origin of the building materials that formed the Earth.
Using a new analysis of existing data, the researchers show that this material must exclusively come from the inner solar system.
The material that formed the Earth is similar to that found on Mars and the asteroid Vesta. The Earth is thus part of a trend line extending from the Sun.
This close relationship also enables predictions to be made about the composition of Venus and Mercury, from which we have no known samples.
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