Ancient meteorite sample reveals secrets of early solar system
An international team of scientists has uncovered evidence of the early solar system within an ancient meteorite that landed on Earth. The meteorite, retrieved in 2018, is believed to contain material that originated from the protoplanetary disk, a cloud of dust and gas from which our solar system formed around 4.5 billion years ago. This discovery could potentially revolutionize our understanding of the solar system's history, and the fundamental elements that shaped our world.
The birth of our solar system
The Sun, akin to all stars, was born in a cloud of dust. A denser region within this cloud collapsed due to its own gravity, forming a spinning disk that supplied material to the growing star. After the Sun's formation, the remaining disk gave rise to everything else in our solar system: planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and icy rocks that form the Oort Cloud.
Meteorites: A key to understanding the early solar system
The Oort Cloud is believed to be a pristine example of the original material that formed the planets. However, studying this material has been difficult due to its distance from the Sun, and its tendency to vaporize upon entering Earth's atmosphere. Meteorites provide a solution to this problem. When comets and meteorites collide in space, some cometary material can mix into the meteorite and be preserved as fragments called clasts. This is what happened with the meteorite NWA 14250.
Meteorite analysis reveals cometary origins
A team led by cosmochemist Elishevah van Kooten from the University of Copenhagen analyzed the meteorite NWA 14250. Their findings, published in Science Advances, suggest that some of the minerals in its clasts likely originated from comets. The team also found that these clasts were similar to those found in other meteorites from the outer solar system near Neptune, and samples taken from asteroid Ryugu. This implies that primordial material was relatively widespread during the solar system's formation.
