EPS Colloquium – Rebecca Fischer, Harvard University

Lessons from Core Formation

Core formation is the process by which a terrestrial planet’s metallic core segregates out from its silicate mantle during accretion. Molten metal reacts with molten rock at extremely high pressures and temperatures in a series of metal–silicate partitioning reactions, which are responsible for establishing the initial compositions of the planet’s core and mantle. This process has far-reaching implications, ranging from the formation of the Solar System to the modern-day, from the microscopic to the planetary-scale, and from the planet’s surface to its core. In this talk, I will highlight a few examples of these implications for the Earth, and how we study them using a combination of high pressure–temperature experiments and numerical modeling.

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