Now where did all that carbon go? (Image: Christian Miller/iStock)
FIRE sweeping through the inner solar system may have scorched away much of the carbon from Earth and the other inner planets.
Though our planet supports carbon-based life, it has a mysterious carbon deficit. The element is thousands of times more abundant in comets in the outer solar system than on Earth, relative to the amount of silicon each body contains. The sun is similarly rich in carbon. “There really wasn’t that much carbon that made it onto Earth compared to what was available,” says Edwin Bergin of the…
