Why Earth and Mars are depleted in moderately volatile elements (MVEs).

MVEs like copper and zinc play a crucial role in planetary chemistry, often accompanying life-essential elements such as water, carbon, and nitrogen. Understanding their origin provides vital clues about why Earth became a habitable world. Earth and Mars contain significantly fewer MVEs than primitive meteorites (chondrites), raising fundamental questions about planetary formation…

Surprisingly, the team found that many inner solar system planetesimals retained chondrite-like MVE abundances, showing that they accreted and preserved MVEs despite undergoing differentiation.

This suggests that the progenitors of Earth and Mars did not start out depleted in these elements, but instead, their loss occurred over a prolonged history of collisional growth rather than incomplete condensation in the solar nebula or planetesimal differentiation.