What strikes me about this article is how it challenges the core theories and current “answers” of science. In our modern society we tend to put ultimate confidence in the current scientific explanations and laugh at our predecessors who thought the earth was flat. Well… I think little findings like this should keep us humble regarding our current understanding of the universe. The universe might have a few tricks up its sleeve yet.
Anne Minard March 19, 2008
A new study is challenging the long-standing notion that the whole solar system formed from the same raw materials.
Until now most scientists had believed that the inner solar system bodies—Mercury, Venus, Earth, its moon, and Mars—had the same composition as primitive meteorites called chondrites.
But, problematically, Earth’s chemistry doesn’t quite match.
Now, French researcher Guillaume Caro, from Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques in France, and his colleagues say that the makeup of Mars and the moon don’t correspond either.
It turns out the three bodies may be more similar to each other than the chondrite-rich asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter.
Caro and his team say scientists may now have to revisit the idea that chondrites represent the building blocks for the whole solar system.
“What our results suggest is that the sorting of the elements that make up these planets may have happened at a much earlier stage than had been believed,” said Alex Halliday, a study co-author from Oxford University.
“The composition of these worlds is inconsistent with them simply forming out of large ‘lumps’ of stony meteorites like those we see today in the asteroid belt.”
The study appears in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.
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Looking at this from a postmodern perspective, perhaps we bring our assumptions and presuppositions along with us when we interpret the clues to the history of the universe. Or maybe not. But I tend to believe absolute objectiveness can be difficult to achieve. After all, history is interpreted by the criteria of the present. I suggest that we cannot divorce who we are and where we are from our understandings and interpretations of things.
I suspect one thousand years from now (if the earth still exists), humanity will look back on our time and laugh at some of our theories. Indeed, the universe may still have a bit more than a few tricks up its sleeve. I like to think that it always will! =)
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