A new study suggests, 4.6 billion years ago, space rocks pummeling the Earth kept it hot and molten. As the planet grew bigger the heat and pressure kept precious metals trapped within its upper layers rather than allowing them to sink into the newly forming core. Later, chemical reactions with sulfur pulled the metals deep down. This discovery is giving scientists insight on how the planet formed. In the first 100 million years or so of Earth’s existence, the planet grew to about 60 percent of its modern-day mass, the conditions kept the highly siderophile elements (the gold) in the planet’s middle layer, the mantle, rather than dropping into the core. This new discovery is a huge advancement in the science world.Scientist all over the world have been trying to figure out how the earth first formed. Scientist might even be able to extend this sort of approach to other planets and make predictions about their early histories. Gold is a nonrenewable resource because it is an natural earth product. However this explains why there is not very much gold on earth’s outer layer because most of it is in earth’s Iron rich core.
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