Unlocking the origin of life-essential volatiles in rocky planets using iron meteorites

The habitability of rocky planets, including Earth, hinges on how and when they acquired life-essential volatiles like nitrogen, carbon, and water. Our current understanding on this topic is primarily drawn from chondrites, but they may not provide a complete picture. The seeds of rocky planets formed almost at the onset of solar formation and underwent differentiation. Chondrites sample either the surfaces of these early-formed planetesimals or late-forming ones, making them less than ideal for tracking the origin of volatiles in rocky planets. In my presentation, I will provide a fresh approach to this long-standing puzzle, leveraging an often-ignored class of meteorites – iron meteorites. I will demonstrate how the fate of volatiles during planetesimal differentiation controls the recipe for the formation of habitable rocky planets and how this challenges our current understanding based on current planetary science and astrophysical models.