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Blobrana


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New Study Shows Earthly Gold Came from 'Alien' Bombardment

Prices for gold are at seemingly unworldly highs these days, and maybe that's fitting in light of a new study that says almost all the gold we humans hold so dear was likely delivered to Earth by massive planetoids that crashed into our planet late in its formation some 4.5 billion years ago.
Published in this week's issue of the journal Science, the findings provide weighty new evidence that the gold, platinum, palladium and other iron-loving elements found in the crusts and mantles of Earth, the Moon and Mars arrived on mini-planet-sized impactors during the final phase of planet formation in our solar system. These massive collisions occurred within tens of millions of years after the even bigger impact that produced our Moon, say the authors, a team of researchers from the University of Maryland, the Southwest Research Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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Blobrana


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Prospectors who lost out in the gold rush probably wouldn't agree but Earth has more gold than it should. The shiny stuff is one of several metals that are puzzlingly common. Now it seems a last-minute bombardment, after Earth formed, may have supplied these extra elements.
The planets formed when tiny rocks collided, forming ever larger lumps. Then, after Earth was born a second planet about the size of Mars crashed into it. This cataclysmic shock blasted a huge cloud of material into orbit, where it coalesced to form the moon.
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