杏吧原创

Planets and moons weren鈥檛 the only cosmic objects to get splattered with gold early on in the solar system鈥檚 history 鈥� small asteroids got some bling too.

Gold, platinum and other iron-loving, or 鈥渟iderophile鈥�, elements get dragged to the core of a planet if they are present when it is still forming. So siderophiles found in planets鈥� mantles must have been delivered later, by meteorites.

Now of the University of Durham, UK, and colleagues have shown that smaller bodies like the asteroid Vesta also have siderophiles in their mantles. That suggests these bodies, which formed earlier than planets, also received gold from meteorites.

Journal reference: , DOI: 10.1126/science.1214967