Timing of Earth’s water delivery (main accretion vs. late veneer)

Determine whether Earth’s water was delivered primarily during the main accretion phase or during the late veneer after Earth’s core had formed, in order to clarify the timing of water incorporation into Earth’s interior and its implications for core versus mantle reservoirs.

Background

The paper discusses evidence that Earth’s core may host a substantial fraction of Earth’s water, but emphasizes that this inference depends critically on when water was delivered to the planet. If water arrived prior to or during core formation, partitioning into the metallic core could occur; if water arrived predominantly after core formation (during the late veneer), much of it would not have been sequestered in the core.

Clarifying the timing of water delivery informs models of volatile distribution and the interpretation of mass–radius relationships for rocky planets, including exoplanets where analogous processes may operate.