Short-lived radionuclides as monitors of early crust–mantle differentiation on the terrestrial planets

Abstract

The kinetic energy from large impacts, the gravitational energy released by core formation, and the heat provided by the decay of short-lived radioactive isotopes all drive extensive melting and chemical differentiation of silicate planets/planetesimals during and shortly after their formation. This early differentiation is best preserved on small objects such as the parent bodies of the eucrite and angrite meteorites where silicate melts were produced within 3 million years of solar system formation. The W isotopic composition of some iron meteorites testifies to core segregation on small planetesimals within as little as one million years or less of solar system formation. On larger objects, such as the Moon, Mars and Earth, the evidence for early differentiation provided by long-lived radioisotope systems has been variably overprinted by the continuing differentiation of these objects, but a clear signature of extensive early planet-scale differentiation is preserved in a variety of short-lived radioisotope systems, particularly, I–Pu–Xe, Hf–W and 146Sm– 142Nd. All these systems suggest that global differentiation of planetesimals and the terrestrial planets occurred during the first hundred million years of solar system history. This early processing of the Moon, Mars and Earth, may have fundamentally affected the evolution of these planets and their current internal compositional structure.