Siderophile elements and the earth's formation

Two comments on a work by Murthy (1991) concerning the abundances of siderophile elements in the earth's mantle are presented. In the first comment it is asserted that the basis of Murthy's extrapolation is the assumption that the Gibbs free energy change for the partitioning reaction is independent of temperature, and as this is generally not a valid assumption thermodynamically, and as this is contradicted by most experimental data, the issue of mantle siderophile elements remains unresolved. In the second comment it is asserted that the extrapolation method used by Murthy does not appear to be valid thermodynamically, and that an extrapolation based on generally accepted thermodynamic assumptions yields different results. In a reply, Murthy takes issue with the comments.