Unraveling the origin of Earth’s volatile elements from meteorites, the building blocks of the solar system, may be complicated by planetary-scale processes such as differentiation, crystallization, and degassing. Previous models […]
The magma ocean hypothesis is a leading explanation for how the Moon differentiated from its innermost mantle layers to its outermost crustal layer. Igneous samples returned from the surface of […]
The leading model for the primary differentiation of Earth and other rocky planets and moons holds that these bodies had global oceans of magma that crystallized to form central cores, […]
The prevailing paradigm for formation of the layered core-mantle-crust structure of a rocky planet or moon is the crystallization of a global magma ocean. The Moon serves as a geologic […]
Different planets have different oxidation states. For example, the Earth’s crust and mantle are very oxidized, while the Moon and Mars are much more reduced. This is important because the […]
One of the oldest problems in lunar geology is the source of its paleomagnetic field. Recent work by Aaron Scheinberg and colleagues suggests that the magnetic field could have developed […]