Stochastic Late Accretion to Earth, the Moon, and Mars

Abstract

For the Love of Iron: Iron-loving elements such as Re, Os, Ir, Pt, Rh, Pd, and Au must have been delivered to the upper mantle of Earth, Mars, and the Moon after formation of the planetary cores, because, before that, these elements tended to bond with the core's metallic iron, stripping them from the planetary upper layers. Using Monte Carlo models, Bottke et al. (p. 1527 ) show that the relative abundances of iron-loving elements on Earth, Mars, and the Moon can be explained if most of the impacting planetesimals that delivered the elements had sizes extending up to several thousand kilometers. In these circumstances, most of the iron-loving elements would arrive in a small number of random impacts, the most massive of which hit Earth but not the Moon. Some of these impacts may also have altered Earth's obliquity, produced the Moon's orbital inclination, and delivered water to the Moon's mantle.