Terrestrial Accretion Under Oxidizing Conditions

What was the composition of the earliest terrestrial starting blocks? The answer lies in understanding how Earth's interior separated into mantle and core components. Siebert et al. (p. 1194, published online 10 January) performed a series of high pressure and temperature experiments to track how chromium and vanadium, which have a slight affinity for iron, partition into metal and silicate fractions. Combined with accretionary models, the data suggest that Earth accreted under the same relatively oxidizing conditions under which the most common types of meteorites formed. Transferring oxygen in the form of FeO from the mantle to the core could have gradually reduced the mantle to its present-day oxidation state.