The blue Planet

Origin of water on Planet Earth

The Earth is termed “the blue planet” with two third of its surface covered by oceans. The water played and plays a key role in the development of life on Earth. Its origin, however, is still not known. The water may have accreted in form of hydrous silicates from the building blocks of the Earth. An alternative is that the water came in late to Earth from comets or hydrous planetesimals. In this project, we will mainly use high-precision laboratory triple oxygen isotope measurements on lunar (meteorites and Apollo samples) and terrestrial impact rocks (South Africa, Australia). The goal is to identify the nature of the material that accreted late on Earth and Moon before ~ 3 Ga ago. Eventually, we want to find where the water from Earth came from.

We are looking for a motivated PhD student with an excellent MSc in geosciences, physics, chemistry, or related fields. A solid background in mass spectrometric methods is welcome. You will work in a team led by scientists from the Geoscience Center of the University of Göttingen (Andreas Pack, Stefan Peters) and from the Max-Planck-Institute of Solar System Research (Paul Hartogh).