What makes planets habitable? New grant will help researchers get answers
Martin Schiller from Globe Institute has received an ERC grant of over DKK 14 million for his research into planets and the conditions that need to be present for life to emerge.
Associate Professor Martin Schiller from the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at Globe Institute has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant of DKK 14.7 million for his project "NEWROCK".
What is the main aim of the project?
“With the ERC Grant we can now dig deeper into the question of what makes a planet habitable. Since the discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a main sequence star in 1995, there is now a plethora of known exoplanets of various sizes. But the formation of a planet that is conducive to the emergence of life is more complex than simply its formation with an appropriate composition at the right distance from its host star. Venus is a perfect example given that it is devoid of life despite it being essentially a twin of Earth in mass, composition, and distance from the sun.”
What is your method of research?
“We will determine isotope signatures of meteoritic inclusions and interpret these data in the context of terrestrial planet formation. In detail, we will develop a comprehensive database of isotopic fingerprints including age information for individual inclusions from primitive meteorites that formed at distinct heliocentric distances. This will allows us to better constrain the mechanism and source material, such as the origin of Earth’s volatiles, from which our terrestrial planets formed.
How does your project relate to science already in the field?
“The traditional approach in cosmochemistry is to take a bulk meteorite samples and try and place their composition in the framework of what is already known from the collections. In the past we also thought that planets form from collisions of ever larger objects, so this approach was valid in understanding of what meteoritics analogues, for example, the Earth was made from. Now, however, we think planets actually grow by the very efficient accretion of millimeter to centimeter particles, which is called pebble accretion. Thus, to understand the material precursors to planets, we need to shift our focus from looking at bulk meteorites to the small inclusions that are present in primitive meteorites. With this project we will take a step along this path by developing new tracers that are sensitive enough to achieve this task on the now much smaller sample scale.“
Contact
Associate Professor Martin Schiller
schiller@sund.ku.dk
+45 35 32 51 57