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Our planet’s primeval atmosphere was as toxic as that of present-day Venus, as gases escaped from an ocean of magma during the development of the Earth, scientists discovered after fusing suspended marbles with lasers for their research.
According to the scientists, a Mars-sized object likely crashed into young Earth in an impact that released enough energy to melt the entire mantle of the primeval planet, the layer between the core and the crust, turning it into magma.
This gigantic event would have stripped most of the Earth’s atmosphere back then, to be replaced by a new one, dominated by carbon dioxide and low in nitrogen, very similar to the atmospheric composition of Venus today, and similar to Mars.
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The findings come from a study by Paolo Sossi and his team at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, whose article, published in Science Advances on Wednesday, examined “Earth’s magma ocean and its primeval Venus-like atmosphere.”
To understand the atmosphere of early Earth, the team decided to recreate those conditions by floating a small piece of rock on a jet of gas and then melting it with a 1900 ° C laser.
“This small molten marble that floats at almost 2000 degrees is a kind of miniature molten Earth” Sossi told New Scientist.
Using different gases in the jet to suspend the piece of molten rock, the researchers recreated varying atmospheric conditions, allowing them to see which one most closely matched the Earth’s mantle samples and geological record.
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The team found that once the atmosphere released from the primeval Earth’s magma ocean cooled, it would have “It resembled that of today’s Venus.” This, they say, implies that the current differences between the atmospheres of Earth and Venus reflect what happened after the two planets formed.
Our planet is large enough that gravity keeps its atmosphere in place, unlike Mars, while Earth’s position in the solar system also makes it cold enough compared to Venus, the second planet from the sun.
This means that, unlike Venus, water remains in liquid form on the earth’s surface and can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to prevent the planet from overheating and, above all, create and maintain the conditions necessary to sustain life.
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