Formation of the Solar System and the planets
Our research in this area focuses on the origin and evolution of our solar system and our planet Earth. We investigate processes, which occurred before, during and after the formation of the Earth.
This includes the formation of the Earth and the solar system from the so-called solar nebula. This is a disk consisting of dust and gas, which rotated around the newly formed Sun and from which the planets and asteroids were built. It also includes the Earth’s earliest evolutional stages, such as the formation of the core, the creation of the Moon and the development of the first continents.
These topics are mainly pursued using geochemistry, which allows us to investigate a large number of geological processes by comparing the abundances of elements and isotopes in various samples. Prerequisites for successful research in isotope geochemistry are highly sensitive state-of-the-art mass spectrometers and ultramodern clean-room laboratories. The isotope geochemistry laboratory at ETH Zurich is one of the best-equipped labs of its type worldwide and is used for the analysis of stable and radioactive isotopes and noble gases. Novel methods of isotope analysis and new types of equipment are also developed here.
The primary research focus of our group can be divided in following topics:
- To determine of the origin of the initial material, which makes up the planets including the Earth. We apply high-precision isotope measurements of elements such as zirconium and titanium and demonstrated that meteorites, which originate from asteroids, are not direct remnants of the Earth’s building blocks.
- To refine the chronology of events in the first million years of our solar system using radioactive isotopes.
- To better understand the physical and chemical conditions under which the Earth and other celestial bodies were formed. This includes, for example, how the Earth’s core and the metallic cores of asteroids formed and evolved. By analyzing iron meteorites, which sample metallic cores of asteroids, the research group was able to show that these cores had solidified within the first few million years of our solar system.
- To determine the origin of volatile elements in the Earth and their history in the early solar system based on short-lived radioactive nuclides. This research revealed that the Earth was dry in the beginning, and that volatile elements arrived on Earth slightly later, while the formation of the Earth’s core was still underway.
- To track the formation of the Earth’s Moon and the first continents early in the Earth’s history.
- To develop the cutting-edge methods in isotope geochemistry needed to resolve important questions in the earth sciences.
Contact
Deputy head of Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology
Inst. für Geochemie und Petrologie
Clausiusstrasse 25
8092
Zürich
Switzerland
