Crash! Early Collision Could Explain How Earth Kept its Carbon

The early Earth could have been hit by a Mercury-like planet embryo deep in its past, letting the planet keep hold of the carbon necessary for life, a new study suggests. The Experimental Petrology Rice Team — who study the origin, composition and structure of rocks at Rice University in Texas — re-created conditions inside Earth in the lab to help solve a long-standing mystery: how carbon-based life could have developed on Earth when early carbon would have boiled away or sunk to th