Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: So take a look at a glass of water, Like,
Speaker 2: just picture it sitting there right on your kitchen counter.
Speaker 2: If you were to take that glass, isolate just a
Speaker 2: single drop of it and ask the absolute smartest planetary
Speaker 2: physicists on Earth to analyze its atomic signature, well for
Speaker 2: the last forty years or so, they would have told
Speaker 2: you a very specific, a very dramatic story about where
Speaker 2: it came from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a highly dramatic one.
Speaker 2: Right. They would have told you that the water you're
Speaker 2: about to drink was delivered by this massive bombardment of
Speaker 2: icy commet and frozen asteroids from billions of mild away
Speaker 2: like from the absolute darkest, coldest edges of the outer
Speaker 2: Solar System.
Speaker 3: It was basically the ultimate cosmic import business. I mean,
Speaker 3: the prevailing scientific consensus was just absolutely locked in on
Speaker 3: this idea that the Earth was born dryly dry, yeah, completely,
Speaker 3: and that it required this massive chaotic delivery system to
Speaker 3: become the blue marble that you know today.
Speaker 2: Right, But today we know they were wrong, like completely wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The water in your glass, the ground beneath your feet,
Speaker 2: the mountains, the ocean's literally the entire mass of the Earth.
Speaker 2: It wasn't imported at all, No, not even a little bit.
Speaker 2: It was locally sourced. And we are going to explore
Speaker 2: exactly how researchers at ETH Zurich, specifically planetary scientists Paulososi
Speaker 2: and Dan Bauer, have completely rewritten the recipe for our planet.
Speaker 2: I mean, they've proven that the Earth is a one
Speaker 2: hundred percent local creation.
Speaker 3: Which is just a massive fundamental paradigm shift. We're talking
Speaker 3: about dismantling decades of accepted planetary science.
Speaker 2: Here, decades of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because when you prove that the Earth didn't need
Speaker 3: the Outer Solar System to get its water, you aren't
Speaker 3: just changing the history of one planet. You are completely
Speaker 3: altering our entire understanding of how star systems form. Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and how vulnerable elements survive and ultimately, you know what
Speaker 3: the actual recipe for a habitable world really looks.
Speaker 2: Like, Okay, let's untack this because to really grasp the
Speaker 2: magnitude of what Soci and Bower have uncovered, we need
Speaker 2: to first thoroughly understand the old consensus, Like, why was
Speaker 2: the scientific community so utterly convinced that we needed this
Speaker 2: elaborate cosmic delivery service in the first place. Why did
Speaker 2: they think that, uh, I think it was up to
Speaker 2: forty percent of the Earth's mass had to come from
Speaker 2: beyond Jupiter.
Speaker 3: Well, it really all comes down to a concept called
Speaker 3: the snow line, or sometimes it's called the frost line
Speaker 3: in the early Solar System. Okay, so when you look
Speaker 3: back for and have billion years before the planets were
Speaker 3: actual spheres, the Solar System was just this flat protoplanetary.
Speaker 2: Disc basically just a swirling cloud of gas and dust
Speaker 2: right the really young, highly energetic.
Speaker 3: Sun exactly, and the physics of that disc dictate a
Speaker 3: very severe temperature gradient close to the Sun where the
Speaker 3: Earth was busy forming. The ambient temperature of this swirling
Speaker 3: gas and dust was just incredibly hid an oven, yeah,
Speaker 3: a scorching environment, and in that kind of heat, volatile elements,
Speaker 3: which are elements and compounds with really low boiling points,
Speaker 3: So primarily water, but also things like carbon and nitrogen,
Speaker 3: they simply cannot condense into a solid form. They just
Speaker 3: remain as a vapor, and the intense solar wind of
Speaker 3: the young Sun just relentlessly pushes that vapor outward.
Speaker 2: So the inner Solar system is essentially this giant cosmic oven.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like baking a highly specific cake. You
Speaker 2: can't bake water into a rock if the ambient temperature
Speaker 2: is hot enough to instantly vaporize it.
Speaker 3: Right precisely, to find any solid ice, you had to
Speaker 3: travel far far out into the disk, like well beyond
Speaker 3: the orbit of where Jupiter is today. Lay out there, yeah,
Speaker 3: because out there pass the snow line, the temperatures finally
Speaker 3: drop low enough for water vapor to actually freeze onto
Speaker 3: the tiny dust grains, which then create icy pebbles, and
Speaker 3: eventually you get these massive icy asteroids and.
Speaker 2: Comets, which naturally leads to the old assumption. If the
Speaker 2: Earth formed inside the oven, it must have been baked bone.
Speaker 3: Dry, right, that was the logic.
Speaker 2: But clearly, you know we have oceans. So the old
Speaker 2: logic dictates that once the oven cooled down a bit,
Speaker 2: someone or something must have thrown a huge bunch of
Speaker 2: ice into it. But if the inner Solar System was
Speaker 2: considered this hot dry zone, wasn't the assumption of an
Speaker 2: outer system water delivery just entirely logical based on the physics.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, it made perfect sense based on the older models.
Speaker 3: In fact, things like the Grand Tac and other planetary
Speaker 3: migration models were heavily relied upon to explain this exact mechanism.
Speaker 2: Grand Tach.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So scientists hypothesize that the giant planets, particularly Jupiter
Speaker 3: and Saturn, they actually migrated inward and then outward during
Speaker 3: their early formation.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, they moved around Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah a lot. And this gravitational dance would have totally
Speaker 3: destabilized the orbits of countless icy, water rich bodies in
Speaker 3: the outer Solar System. It would have sent them hurtling
Speaker 3: inward to crash right into the early dry Earth.
Speaker 2: So it was just this violently chaotic mechanism designed specifically
Speaker 2: to solve the water problem.
Speaker 3: Exactly. It made perfect logical sense based on the thermodynamic
Speaker 3: models of the time. But what's fascinating here is that
Speaker 3: Socium Bower's new calculations completely dismantle that entire logic completely. Yeah,
Speaker 3: their analysis reveals that material from the outer Solar System
Speaker 3: accounts for less than two percent of Earth mass, and honestly,
Speaker 3: their data suggests it's potentially zero percent zero.
Speaker 2: I mean, the imported ingredients simply aren't there at all.
Speaker 2: The Earth was built entirely from the dry, supposedly volatile
Speaker 2: stripped materials of the inner Solar System. Yes, which is
Speaker 2: just absolutely staggering to think about. But it begs a
Speaker 2: really massive question if we are completely overhauling of forty
Speaker 2: year old consensus. I mean, the proof has to be ironclad.
Speaker 3: Oh, it has to be undeniable.
Speaker 2: Right, because we weren't there four and a half billion
Speaker 2: years ago to watch the Earth of crete. So how
Speaker 2: do we definitively prove where a rock actually formed?
Speaker 3: Well, we look at the atomic fingerprints locked inside the
Speaker 3: rocks themselves. Specifically, we look at something called nucleosynthetic isotopic anomalies.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's dive deep into that, because this is really
Speaker 2: the core of the whole discovery. When we talk about isotopes,
Speaker 2: we aren't just talking about slight variations in weight, are
Speaker 2: we We are actually talking about the distinct chemical memory
Speaker 2: of dying stars.
Speaker 3: That is the perfect way to phrase it. Honestly, Before
Speaker 3: our Sun even ignited, the giant cloud of gas and
Speaker 3: dust that would eventually become our Solar System was seated
Speaker 3: with material from various stellar.
Speaker 2: Phenomena, like what kind of phenomena.
Speaker 3: Well, some dust came from the gentle slow shedding of
Speaker 3: red giant stars, and other dust came from violently explosive supernovae, and.
Speaker 2: Each of those different stellar events produces diff diferent flavors basically,
Speaker 2: or isotopes of the elements we know, right, like titanium
Speaker 2: or chromium.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and crucially, this presolar cloud was not perfectly mixed.
Speaker 3: It wasn't uniform, okay, it was. It was like a
Speaker 3: really poorly stirred cake batter. There were pockets with a
Speaker 3: slightly higher concentration of supernova dust, and then other pockets
Speaker 3: with slightly more red giant dust. Right and as the
Speaker 3: protoplanetary disc formed and started spinning around the young Sun,
Speaker 3: these subtle variations in the isotopic ratios these anomalies were
Speaker 3: talking about, they were permanently preserved in the specific regions
Speaker 3: where they coalesced.
Speaker 2: So if a rock forms in the inner Solar System,
Speaker 2: it permanently locks in the specific isotopic batter of that
Speaker 2: local neighborhood. Yes, and if it forms out past Jupiter,
Speaker 2: it locks in a completely different isotopic signature. So it's
Speaker 2: basically a prominent built in barcode.
Speaker 3: It is a literal barcode. But you know, reading that
Speaker 3: barcode has historically been incredibly difficult for scientists. For decades,
Speaker 3: the entire field of cosmo chemistry relied almost exclusively on
Speaker 3: the isotopes of a single element to towart to trace
Speaker 3: these origins, which was oxygen, right, Yes, oxygen?
Speaker 2: Why just oxygen? Is it just because it's everywhere largely?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oxygen is incredibly abundant in rocky materials. I mean,
Speaker 3: it makes up a huge percentage of silicate minerals. So
Speaker 3: it was simply the easiest thing to measure in the lab. Sure,
Speaker 3: but relying on oxygen comes with a severe limitation. Oxygen
Speaker 3: is a highly volatile element, and in the early Solar
Speaker 3: system a vast vast amount of it was just floating
Speaker 3: around as a gas like carbon monoxide or water vapor.
Speaker 2: Ah, So it interacts with stuff, it mixes.
Speaker 3: It interacts constantly.
Speaker 2: YEA.
Speaker 3: The oxygen in a solid grain of dust can very
Speaker 3: easily exchange its isotopes with the oxygen in the surround
Speaker 3: of gas. It's totally fluid. Oh wow. Therefore, the oxygen
Speaker 3: isotopic signature of a rock can be altered, blurred, or
Speaker 3: just completely overwritten by its environment long long after it initially.
Speaker 2: Formed, so it's not a reliable barcot at all.
Speaker 3: No, using oxygen to trace a rock origin is like
Speaker 3: trying to trace the origin of a specific drop of
Speaker 3: water in a flowing river. It's just too easily compromised.
Speaker 2: Which brings us to the real breakthrough. In the early
Speaker 2: twenty tens, researchers realized they needed to look at elements
Speaker 2: that don't interact right, elements that just refuse to change
Speaker 2: their signature no matter what. And they landed on things
Speaker 2: like titanium and chromium. Yes, why those specific elements.
Speaker 3: Because titanium and chromium are what we call highly refractory.
Speaker 2: Elements, meaning they like it hot.
Speaker 3: Extremely hot. They candense from a gas into a solid
Speaker 3: at incredibly high temperatures. We're talking well over a thousand
Speaker 3: degrees kelvin.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: This means they were among the very first elements to
Speaker 3: actually solidify out of the hot solar nebula. And here's
Speaker 3: the key. Once they lock into a solid mineral structure,
Speaker 3: they absolutely do not exchange isotopes with the surrounding gas.
Speaker 3: They are stubborn, very stubborn. They perfectly preserve the exact
Speaker 3: nucleosynthetic signature of the local dust from the earliest possible
Speaker 3: moments of the Solar systems.
Speaker 2: For so, they are the perfect witnesses. They saw the
Speaker 2: Solar system form, and they locked their memory in a vault.
Speaker 2: And once planetary scientists started using these refractory elements, it
Speaker 2: completely changed the map of the Solar System, didn't it.
Speaker 2: It allowed them to split all meteorites into two very distinct,
Speaker 2: unarguable categories.
Speaker 3: It did. You had the non carbonaceous meteorites, which formed
Speaker 3: exclusively in the inner Solar System, and then the carbonaceous metiaorites,
Speaker 3: which formed way out in the outer Solar System, passed
Speaker 3: the orbit of Jupiter and contained significantly higher amounts of
Speaker 3: water and carbon.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's where it gets really interesting, because if we've
Speaker 2: had this incredibly precise titanium and chromium fingerprinting method since
Speaker 2: the early twenty tens, and we've had meteorite samples from
Speaker 2: the asteroid Vesta and from Mars for decades, right, right, half,
Speaker 2: Then why are we only finding out right now that
Speaker 2: the Earth is entirely non carbonaceous? Why didn't someone figure
Speaker 2: this out ten years ago? Was the old oxygen only
Speaker 2: method just too blurry or was there more to it?
Speaker 3: Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture, analyzing
Speaker 3: just titanium and chromium is still only giving you a
Speaker 3: two dimensional view of a vastly complex system. If you
Speaker 3: want to definitively prove that Earth contains absolutely zero percent
Speaker 3: outer Solar System material, you really cannot rely on just
Speaker 3: two data.
Speaker 2: Points, even if they are highly reliable data points exactly.
Speaker 3: Think of it like a forensic investigation. If you find
Speaker 3: DNA at a crime scene, checking just two genetic markers
Speaker 3: might tell you the suspect is from a certain hemisphere,
Speaker 3: but it won't give you their exact identity.
Speaker 2: Right. The error bars are just too wide?
Speaker 3: Yes, If the oxotopic data for Earth, Mars, and the
Speaker 3: carbonaceous meteorites are plotted on a simple two dimensional graph
Speaker 3: using just titanium and chromium, the data points have these
Speaker 3: tiny margins of error that can sometimes overlap oh I see,
Speaker 3: and that overlap leaves room for doubt. It leaves room
Speaker 3: for a science is holding onto the old theory to say, well,
Speaker 3: maybe there's a five percent mix of carbonaceous material in
Speaker 3: there as a little.
Speaker 2: Cosmic import model still had room to breathe side those
Speaker 2: tiny margins of error.
Speaker 3: Precisely, to truly eliminate the margins of error, you have
Speaker 3: to drastically increase the dimensionality of your data. And that
Speaker 3: is exactly what Powell, associ and dan Bauer did. They
Speaker 3: didn't go out and discover some brand new shiny rock.
Speaker 3: They orchestrated a total triumph of methodology. They gathered existing
Speaker 3: isotopic data on ten different element systems ten.
Speaker 2: So we're moving from a simple two dimensional graph to
Speaker 2: a ten dimensional mathematical space exactly.
Speaker 3: They looked at the isotopes of iron, calcium, molybdenum, ruthenium, tungsten, neodymium,
Speaker 3: and several others. Wow, and each of these elements condenses
Speaker 3: at completely different temperatures and has slightly different nucleosynthetic origins.
Speaker 2: But human brains can't even visualize a ten dimensional graph.
Speaker 2: I mean, how do you even begin to map the
Speaker 2: isotopic signature of Earth against meteorites in ten dimensions.
Speaker 3: Well, you have to step out of the realm of
Speaker 3: traditional geochemistry and enter the realm of advanced data science.
Speaker 3: The researchers utilize specialized to test calculations, specifically dimensionality reduction techniques.
Speaker 3: Think of methods akin to principal component analysis or PCA.
Speaker 2: Okay, break that down for us, because this sounds like
Speaker 2: taking a dusty library of old, handwritten census records that
Speaker 2: historians have stared at for decades, applying a modern statistical
Speaker 2: algorithm to them, and suddenly uncovering a completely hidden family
Speaker 2: tree that rewrites history. How does a tool like PCA
Speaker 2: actually work on chemical data?
Speaker 3: That's a great analogy. So imagine you have this massive,
Speaker 3: chaotic cloud of data points representing all these different meteorites,
Speaker 3: and they are floating around in a ten dimensional room.
Speaker 3: To the naked eye, it just looks like random noise.
Speaker 2: Just a massive dots, right.
Speaker 3: But PCA is a mathematical algorithm that essentially rotates that room.
Speaker 3: It looks for the specific angles where the data naturally
Speaker 3: lines up. It finds the underlying structure, the hidden axes
Speaker 3: of variants that explain the most significant differences between all
Speaker 3: the samples.
Speaker 2: It's almost like taking a really complex three dimensional sculpture
Speaker 2: and rotating it under a single light until it casts
Speaker 2: the perfectly clear, recognizable two dimensional shadow on the wall.
Speaker 2: You are just finding the specific mathematical perspective that reveals
Speaker 2: the truth hidden in all that complexity.
Speaker 3: That is a phenomenal way to picture it. And when
Speaker 3: Solcien Bower applied these statistical models to the ten isotope
Speaker 3: data set, the shadow at cast was undeniable in this
Speaker 3: high dimensional space. All the non carbonaceous meteorites, so the
Speaker 3: inner Solar System rocks, they formed a perfectly straight, super
Speaker 3: tight line. Mars is right on that line, the asteroid
Speaker 3: Vesta is exactly on that line, and the Earth sits
Speaker 3: squarely on that exact same line.
Speaker 2: And where are the carbonaceous meteorites, like the icy water
Speaker 2: bearing rocks from the outer Solar System.
Speaker 3: They are completely segregated. They form their own separate, distinct
Speaker 3: cluster in a totally different area of the data space.
Speaker 3: There is zero overlap, no margin of error whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Which brings up a really critical point about how science
Speaker 2: is often conducted. For decades, researchers were looking at these
Speaker 2: exact same rocks, but they were looking at them through
Speaker 2: the lens of a preconceived physical assumption. Weren't they Absolutely
Speaker 2: they assumed the Earth needed outer solar system water, so
Speaker 2: when they built their models, they inherently biased the math
Speaker 2: to allow for a mixture.
Speaker 3: Yes, we call those Bayesian pryors. When you construct a
Speaker 3: model to test a hypothesis, you often feed it prior
Speaker 3: assumptions based on what you already think. You know, right,
Speaker 3: The older models basically instructed the algorithm, hey, find the
Speaker 3: best mixture of inner and outer material to create the Earth,
Speaker 3: and the algorithm, just doing what it was told, found
Speaker 3: a mathematical way to mix them. Even i Physically it
Speaker 3: was highly improbable.
Speaker 2: It's the old adage, right, if you torture the data
Speaker 2: long enough, it will eventually confess to anything exactly.
Speaker 3: And the real brilliance of Bauers' contribution here is that
Speaker 3: their model is entirely agnostic. They completely stripped away all
Speaker 3: those thermodynamic assumptions about hot inner disks and migrating comets.
Speaker 2: They just let the data talk.
Speaker 3: They just let the cold hard numbers of ten different
Speaker 3: isotopic systems speak for themselves, and the numbers do not lie.
Speaker 3: The calculations are entirely robust because they rely solely on
Speaker 3: the data itself. The Earth is a closed system. It
Speaker 3: is one hundred percent non carbonaceous.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what does this all mean? Because this is
Speaker 2: where the physical reality of the Solar System starts to
Speaker 2: really break my brain. Because if the data undeniably proves
Speaker 2: that outer and inner Solar System materials never mixed, if
Speaker 2: the carbonaceous rocks and the non carbonaceous rocks never mingled
Speaker 2: for millions of years while the planet's were forming, we
Speaker 2: have to ask a massive physical question what was physically
Speaker 2: keeping them apart? I mean, the pertal planetary disc is
Speaker 2: a swirling, violent hurricane of gas and dust. Things should
Speaker 2: be crashing into each other constantly.
Speaker 3: They should, which means there had to be a massive
Speaker 3: physical barrier, a dam, and that dam is the biggest,
Speaker 3: heaviest bully in the planetary playground.
Speaker 2: Jupiterjupiter, Jupiter. But I want to push back on this
Speaker 2: little because the mechanics of how Jupiter acts as a
Speaker 2: barrier seem entirely counterintuitive to me. Jupiter is massive, it
Speaker 2: has immense gravity. Wouldn't a giant gravitational vacuum cleaner actually
Speaker 2: pull more icy comets and rocks from the outer Solar
Speaker 2: System inward. How does a massive planet create a wall?
Speaker 3: That is exactly the right question to ask, because it
Speaker 3: highlights the difference between static gravity and the fluid dynamics
Speaker 3: of a protoplanetary disc. You were thinking of Jupiter as
Speaker 3: just a heavyweight sitting in empty space, but you have
Speaker 3: to remember the environment it was in. Jupiter is forming
Speaker 3: inside a massive rotating disk of thick, viscous gas.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's more like a giant rock moving rapidly
Speaker 2: through a thick fluid.
Speaker 3: Precisely as Jupiter grew, and it grew incredibly fast, it
Speaker 3: created huge amounts of hydrogen and helium. Its immense gravity
Speaker 3: began to actually interact with the surrounding gas. It creates
Speaker 3: what are known as limb blad resonance resonance there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: as Jupiter orbits, it generates these massive spiral density waves
Speaker 3: in the gas. It's actually very much like how a
Speaker 3: boat creates a wake as it moves through water.
Speaker 2: Oh I see, so it's actively pushing the fluid away
Speaker 2: from its orbit.
Speaker 3: Yes, The gravitational torque from Jupiter literally clears a physical
Speaker 3: gap in the protoplanetary disk. It sweeps its entire orbit
Speaker 3: clean of gas and dust. But it does more than
Speaker 3: just make an empty lane. By pushing the gas away
Speaker 3: so violently, it creates a massive pressure bump just outside
Speaker 3: its orbit, a pressure.
Speaker 2: Bump like water piling up against a physical dam.
Speaker 3: Exactly like that. Now, consider the dust in the icy pebbles,
Speaker 3: the carbonaceous meteorites that are forming out beyond Jupiter. In
Speaker 3: a normal disk without a giant planet, these pebbles experience
Speaker 3: gas drag. They feel friction against the gas, they lose
Speaker 3: angular momentum, and they naturally spiral inward towards the Sun. Right.
Speaker 3: This inward drift is a fundamental mechanism of how planets form.
Speaker 2: So they are actively trying to drift inward toward where
Speaker 2: the Earth is forming right.
Speaker 3: But when they hit that high pressure ridge created by
Speaker 3: Jupiter's wake, the physics suddenly change. The gas in that
Speaker 3: pressure bump is actually orbiting slightly faster than the normal
Speaker 3: Caplerian speed. This means the gas drag suddenly acts as
Speaker 3: a tailwind rather than a headwind for the pebbles. Wait, really, yes,
Speaker 3: the inward drift stops completely. The pebbles become physically trapped
Speaker 3: in this high pressure zone. Outside Jupiter's orbit, they can't
Speaker 3: move inward anymore.
Speaker 2: That is just brilliant. Did Jupiter effectively act as a
Speaker 2: cosmic bouncer standing at the velvet rope of the asteroid belt,
Speaker 2: physically blocking all those carbonaceous water bitch meteorites from entering
Speaker 2: the inner VIP section.
Speaker 3: That is exactly what happened. It's not that Jupiter's physically
Speaker 3: blocking every single rock with its body. It's that Jupiter
Speaker 3: fundamentally altered the fluid dynamics of the antiresolar system. It
Speaker 3: created a hydrodynamic dam that the icy rocks physically could
Speaker 3: not cross. Wow, and scientists knew Jupiter card to gap.
Speaker 3: That wasn't a secret. But until this specific multidimensional isotopic
Speaker 3: analysis by Saucy and Bower, the actual permeability of that
Speaker 3: barrier remained a mystery.
Speaker 2: Right like did some icy comets manage to slip past.
Speaker 3: The velvet rope exactly? We didn't know if it's magnificant
Speaker 3: amount of material managed to leak through the dam over
Speaker 3: millions of years. But this new analysis proves the dam
Speaker 3: held almost perfectly. The barrier was incredibly tight. Almost no
Speaker 3: material from beyond Jupiter flowed inward. Toward Earth. The two
Speaker 3: zones were strictly segregated.
Speaker 2: Jupiter was the great divider, which is an incredible piece
Speaker 2: of planetary mechanics, but it immediately brings up a monumental,
Speaker 2: inastabable paradox. The dam held the icy comets from the
Speaker 2: outer Solar System were trapped behind Jupiter. They never reached Earth.
Speaker 2: Yet I can go to my kitchen right now and
Speaker 2: turn on the tap and water comes out. If Earth
Speaker 2: only ever accumulated local, dry, non carbonaceous rocks, where on
Speaker 2: Earth did the oceans actually come from?
Speaker 3: You have hit the exact center of the new mystery.
Speaker 3: This raises an important question because by solving the isotopic
Speaker 3: origin of the Earth, so Cym Bower have completely broken
Speaker 3: our previous understanding of early planetary thermodynamics.
Speaker 2: Because if the Earth is completely local, then the water
Speaker 2: absolutely had to be local too, right, it must have
Speaker 2: been present in the inner Solar System from the very beginning.
Speaker 3: Exactly. The research has concluded that Earth grew within a
Speaker 3: relatively static system. It simply sat in its inner neighborhood,
Speaker 3: incorporating the smaller neighboring planetesimals and dust that shared its
Speaker 3: exact non carbonaceous isotopic.
Speaker 2: Signature, just eating local rocks, just feeding.
Speaker 3: On its own local environment, and therefore the volatile elements,
Speaker 3: the water, the carbon, the nitrogen that literally make life possible,
Speaker 3: must have somehow survived the inner Solar systems oven.
Speaker 2: Well, wait, this completely shatters the timeline. If the inner
Speaker 2: Solar system was so incredibly hot during the protoplanetary disk phase,
Speaker 2: how could volatile elements like water just sit there without
Speaker 2: boiling away into deep space. You said earlier that the
Speaker 2: solar wind and the heat would vaporize volatiles and push
Speaker 2: them outward. This feels like a direct contradiction of basic physics.
Speaker 3: It is a contradiction of the models we built. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which simply means our models are missing a crucial mechanism.
Speaker 3: And this is exactly the frontier that Pellasauces team is
Speaker 3: aggressively investigating right now. The isotopic data is undeniable, the
Speaker 3: water was local, We have the wet but the how
Speaker 3: is now the most exciting open question in planetary science today.
Speaker 2: What are the current theories? Because if it's not arriving
Speaker 2: via icy comments, it has to be hiding somewhere in
Speaker 2: the dust.
Speaker 3: Right There are several really fascinating hypotheses emerging. One leading
Speaker 3: idea involves the actual chemical structure of the dust grains themselves.
Speaker 3: We aren't necessarily talking about chunks of free ice sitting around.
Speaker 3: We are talking about water molecules locked deep inside the
Speaker 3: crystalline lattice of early minerals, things like olivine and pyroxene
Speaker 3: oh icee.
Speaker 2: So the water is chemically bound to the rock itself,
Speaker 2: totally protected from the heat.
Speaker 3: Exactly even at super high temperatures, certain mineral structures can
Speaker 3: trap hydrogen and oxygen atoms within their matrix. And when
Speaker 3: these dust grains accrete and smashed together to form a planet,
Speaker 3: the immense pressure and heat of the forming world essentially
Speaker 3: bakes the water out of the rocks from the inside out.
Speaker 3: Wow it outgases it to form an early atmosphere and
Speaker 3: eventually the oceans.
Speaker 2: That implies the rocks of the inner Solar System were
Speaker 2: always inherently wet on a molecular level. That is wild.
Speaker 3: It is. Another really compelling theory involves the young Sun itself.
Speaker 3: The early solar wind was fiercely blowing out hydrogen protons.
Speaker 3: It's entirely possible that these high energy protons slammed into
Speaker 3: the oxygen rich silica dust in the inner disk, literally
Speaker 3: creating water molecules on the surface of the dust grains
Speaker 3: in real time.
Speaker 2: Wait, the Sun was actively manufacturing water on the surface
Speaker 2: of local rocks.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a localized, highly energetic chemical reaction. And another
Speaker 3: factor might simply be that our temperature models of the
Speaker 3: protoplanetary disc were just too simple in what way. Well,
Speaker 3: the disc wasn't perfectly transparent. It was thick and murky
Speaker 3: with dust. It's highly possible that the inner regions experienced significant.
Speaker 2: Shadowing, shadowing like clouds blocking the Sun on a hot.
Speaker 3: Day, exactly like that of dense, thick rings of material
Speaker 3: near the sun completely blocked the intense radiation. Localized cool
Speaker 3: zones might have existed much much closer to the Sun
Speaker 3: than we previously thought, and that would allow water vapor
Speaker 3: to locally condense or at least survive without being entirely
Speaker 3: stripped away.
Speaker 2: It's just staggering to think about. We assumed for so
Speaker 2: long that water was this fragile, exotic thing that had
Speaker 2: to be carefully delivered to a dry world, But the
Speaker 2: reality might be that water is just incredibly resilient it's stubborn.
Speaker 2: It finds a way to bake itself into the very
Speaker 2: foundational dust of a planetary system, even in the absolute hottest,
Speaker 2: most violent environments.
Speaker 3: Which is a perfect segue into the much broader implications
Speaker 3: of this research because the implications of this static glocal
Speaker 3: growth model do not stop at Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: If this multi dimensional isotopic analysis works perfectly for Earth, Mars,
Speaker 3: and Vesta, can we use it to unlock the secrets
Speaker 3: of the planets we literally cannot touch.
Speaker 2: You're talking about Mercury and Venus, right, the two innermost planets?
Speaker 3: Yes, so socium Bower's mathematical model predicts that Venus and
Speaker 3: Mercury rely on the exact same non carbonaceous isotopic line
Speaker 3: as Earth and Mars.
Speaker 2: Meaning they are also one percent locally sourced. They share
Speaker 2: our exact cosmic barcode.
Speaker 3: The model strongly suggests a uniform static building process across
Speaker 3: the entire inner Solar system. It implies that heliocentric distance
Speaker 3: basically how close you are to the Sun within that
Speaker 3: inner region, does not fundamentally alter your primary isotopic building blocks.
Speaker 2: But there is a massive catch here regarding the scientific method, Right,
Speaker 2: because while Saucy can predict their makeup mathematically all day long,
Speaker 2: he cannot verify it analytically right now.
Speaker 3: Right, It's the ultimate frustration of theoretical prediction. The math
Speaker 3: strongly dictates that Venus and Mercury are made of the
Speaker 3: exact same isotopic stock as Earth, but to prove it
Speaker 3: beyond a shadow of a doubt, they desperately need physical evidence,
Speaker 3: and humanity currently possesses absolutely zero physical rock samples from
Speaker 3: Venus Mercury.
Speaker 2: We've never landed a sample return mission there, and we
Speaker 2: haven't found any meteorites that we can definitively say we're
Speaker 2: blasted off the surface of Venus and landed here on Earth.
Speaker 3: No, we haven't. We have Martian meteorites, we have pieces
Speaker 3: of Vesta, we obviously have Earth. But Venus and Mercury
Speaker 3: are just locked away in the deepest part of the
Speaker 3: solar gravity. Well, so the prediction stands as a monumental
Speaker 3: test is waiting, yeah, waiting for future space missions like
Speaker 3: the upcoming Da Vinci or Veritas missions to Venus to
Speaker 3: eventually provide the chemical data that will either confirm or
Speaker 3: deny this math.
Speaker 2: But even without holding a single physical rock from Venus.
Speaker 2: It fills you with sheer awe. Just think about the
Speaker 2: power of this capability. Data science applied to geochemistry essentially
Speaker 2: allows us to peer beneath the crushing atmosphere of Venus.
Speaker 2: It allows us to mathematically deduce the origins of a
Speaker 2: planet we literally cannot touch.
Speaker 3: It really is incredible.
Speaker 2: And if we can do that for Venus, what happens
Speaker 2: when we turn this mathematical model outward beyond our own
Speaker 2: solar ste well that.
Speaker 3: Is precisely where the team is focusing their next frontier.
Speaker 3: Applying these processes to exoplanetary systems, this is.
Speaker 2: Where the local growth model really changes everything, because if
Speaker 2: the Earth got its water locally, what does that mean
Speaker 2: for planets orbiting other stars?
Speaker 3: Historically, when astrobiologists calculated the odds of finding a habitable,
Speaker 3: ocean bearing world around another star, the math was incredibly
Speaker 3: depressing because if you absolutely require the cosmic import model,
Speaker 3: you need a highly specific, rare sequence of events.
Speaker 2: Oh right, You'd need a rocky planet forming in the
Speaker 2: habitable zone A and D. You'd need an outer asteroid
Speaker 2: belt completely full of ice. Indy, you'd need a massive
Speaker 2: gas giant like Jupiter to migrate at exactly the right
Speaker 2: time to throw that ice in word, all without accidentally
Speaker 2: throwing the rocky planet right into the sun exactly.
Speaker 3: It makes the recipe for a habitable planet look like
Speaker 3: a freak accident, a cosmic lottery ticket that requires immense,
Speaker 3: almost impossible luck. But if celsium Bowers model holds true,
Speaker 3: if a planetary neighborhood is naturally static, and water is
Speaker 3: inherently baked into the local dust from the very beginning,
Speaker 3: surviving the intense heat of the inner.
Speaker 2: Disc, then the gas giant isn't a delivery service at all.
Speaker 2: It's just a dam and you don't even necessarily need
Speaker 2: it to deliver anything.
Speaker 3: Right, It implies that the formation of water rich rocky
Speaker 3: planets is not this complex, multi stage billiard game. It
Speaker 3: might actually be the standard, universal default way that terrestrial
Speaker 3: planets form. The volatile ailments are already there in the disk.
Speaker 3: When a rocky planet accretes, it simply scoops them up.
Speaker 2: Imagine how this accelerates our search for earthlike exoplanets. I mean,
Speaker 2: it means that almost any rocky planet forming in the
Speaker 2: habitable zone of its star could naturally possess the ingredients
Speaker 2: for oceans and an atmosphere. Right from this inception, it
Speaker 2: drastically increases the statistical odds that the galaxy is just
Speaker 2: teeming with blue worlds.
Speaker 3: Conceptually, it completely rewrites the Drake equation variables for planetary habitability. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know, as with any massive paradigm shift, we
Speaker 3: do have to reinforce the reality of the scientific process here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: is not going to be accepted overnight.
Speaker 2: I can imagine.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Jessey himself admits that despite these incredibly robust
Speaker 3: multidimensional findings, he and Bauer are bracing for what he
Speaker 3: calls many heated debates.
Speaker 2: Oh I bet you don't just up end a forty
Speaker 2: year old consensus about something as fundamental as where the
Speaker 2: oceans came from without ruffling a lot of academic feathers.
Speaker 2: There are probably entire careers built on those older planetary
Speaker 2: migration models.
Speaker 3: And overturning them requires immense scrutiny. The scientific discourse over
Speaker 3: Earth's building blocks is far from over. Other planetary scientists
Speaker 3: are going to rigorously attack their statistical methods. They will
Speaker 3: try their hardest to find flaws in the principal component analysis.
Speaker 3: They will relentlessly demand explanations for the thermodynamic paradox of
Speaker 3: water surviving in the inner system.
Speaker 2: They will demand to know the how before they fully
Speaker 2: accept the what exactly.
Speaker 3: And that is exactly how it should be. The fierce
Speaker 3: pushback is a healthy, the absolutely necessary part of the
Speaker 3: scientific method. It forces the researchers to dig deeper, to
Speaker 3: find the exact chemical mechanism of water preservation and to
Speaker 3: make their models even more bulletproof.
Speaker 2: It's the crucible of science. You put the idea in
Speaker 2: the fire, and if it survives, it becomes the new truth.
Speaker 2: And right now the local growth model is looking incredibly resilient.
Speaker 3: It is entirely transforming how we view the ground we
Speaker 3: walk on every single day.
Speaker 2: It really is. So let's briefly recap the incredible journey
Speaker 2: we've just been on, because it is a mind bending
Speaker 2: shift in our relationship with the planet. It really is
Speaker 2: for your entire life. You might have assumed, like the
Speaker 2: most brilliant scientists in the world did for decades, that
Speaker 2: you live on a planet built from exotic, far flung
Speaker 2: cosmic imports. You might have looked at a glass of
Speaker 2: water and thought you were drinking melted comments delivered from
Speaker 2: the freezing dark edges of the Solar system in this
Speaker 2: violent game of celestial pinball.
Speaker 3: But the atomic barcode, written in the refractory elements of
Speaker 3: titanium and chromium and analyzed through the revolutionary high dimensional
Speaker 3: lens of modern data science, tells a completely different, profoundly
Speaker 3: elegant story.
Speaker 2: You actually reside on a completely locally sourced world, a
Speaker 2: planet built entirely from the dry, dusty rocks in its
Speaker 2: own immediate neighborhood. A world that was protected from outside
Speaker 2: interference by the massive hydrodynamic dam of Jupiter's gravity. And
Speaker 2: a world that's, somehow, against all our previous thermodynamic logic,
Speaker 2: managed to hold on to its life giving water from
Speaker 2: the very first moments of its fiery birth.
Speaker 3: It completely replaces a chaotic system of chance with a beautiful,
Speaker 3: inherent resilience.
Speaker 2: It really does. It takes that complex imported cosmic supply
Speaker 2: chain idea and replaces it with something deeply fundamental. So
Speaker 2: we want to leave you with a final lingering question
Speaker 2: to ponder long after our conversation today comes to an end.
Speaker 2: Think about this. If Earth's oceans weren't the result of
Speaker 2: a lucky random delivery system, if the water wasn't a
Speaker 2: freak accident of a migrating gas giant, but was instead
Speaker 2: baked directly into the interplanetary dust from the very start.
Speaker 2: What does that mean for the billions of other star
Speaker 2: systems swirling out there in the dark. Does it mean
Speaker 2: the delicate, complex recipe for life isn't a rare, fragile coincidence,
Speaker 2: but rather a standard, inevitable feature of how the universe
Speaker 2: builds planets,