jmysl t1_jdbtpch wrote on March 23, 2023 at 7:40 AM

I was trying to figure out the difference between, “unmelted” and “not melted.” At first it looked like a typo.

For clarity, the water appears to come from unmelted materials and not from melted materials.

GeoGeoGeoGeo OP t1_jdbufn3 wrote on March 23, 2023 at 7:51 AM

Essentially achondrites are melted materials, all produced by melting of their parent bodies such as differentiated planetesimals and differentiated planetary bodies, like the Moon or Mars. Chondrites, on the other hand, have experienced no significant melting as they are pre-planetary rocks, or the building blocks of planets. The implication of this paper then is that Theia (the giant impactor hypothesis that leads to the formation of the moon) could not have delivered water to the early Earth.