Vanadium isotopic difference between the silicate Earth and meteorites

•Vanadium isotope composition of Earth ∼1‰ different to all meteorites investigated.•Heterogeneous distribution of material irradiated by young Sun best explains offset.•Bulk Earth is not likely to have a chondritic vanadium isotope composition.

It has been argued that the stable isotopic composition of the element vanadium (V) provides a potential indicator of the effects high-energy irradiation early in Solar System development. Such irradiation would produce enrichment in the minor isotope, 50V compared with the 400 times more abundant 51V (Gounelle et al., 2001; Lee et al., 1998). Here we show that the vanadium isotopic composition of the silicate Earth is enriched in 51V by ∼0.8‰ compared with carbonaceous and ordinary chondrites as well as achondrites from Mars and the asteroid 4 Vesta. Although V is depleted by core formation, experiments reveal no isotopic fractionation between metal and silicate that could account for the observed difference in V isotope composition between terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials. Nucleosynthetic provenance of the terrestrial vanadium isotope offset is inconsistent with anomalies of other nucleosynthetically produced isotopes in bulk meteorites, which are more variable than vanadium (Burkhardt et al., 2011; Carlson et al., 2007; Trinquier et al., 2009). Furthermore, V isotopes are unlikely to have been affected by volatilization, parent body alteration or impact erosion of Earthʼs surface. Therefore, the cause of the isotopic difference is unclear. One possibility is that Earthʼs isotopically heavier V reflects a deficit in material irradiated during the initial stages of Solar System formation. Whatever the cause, the terrestrial deficit in 50V implies that bulk Earth cannot be entirely reconstructed by mixtures of different meteorites.