Earth May Appeared As Gigantic Spheres of Warm Mud

A new study on Earth suggested that it started as huge balls of warm mud and not as rocky asteroids. Earlier it was viewed by scientists that the planet Earth was built from rocky asteroids. In fact it’s not even Earth, but other planets in our solar system too have a possibility of being originated from gigantic balls of warm mud instead of rocky asteroids.

The researchers at Curtin University in Australia had studied this and deeply analyzed the new theory. Phil Bland who works as a planetary scientist with Curtin University investigated more about smaller planets. According to him, it will get a better insight about these precursors to the larger and known terrestrial planets of today. Bryan Travis who is a senior scientist at Curtin University told the assumption about hydrothermal alteration that was occurring in certain classes of rocky asteroids with material properties similar to meteorites.

Travis added that formation of mud would have occurred when ice melted from heat released from decay of radioactive isotopes. Then only the resulting water would have mixed with fine-grained dust.

By: Bhavna Sharma

Content: Hindustan Times