'I knew we were looking at something very rare,” said one of the authors of a new study.
A fragment of a cometary building block has been found inside a meteorite that broke away from an asteroid. The rare discovery provides a critical insight into the formation of the solar system over 4.5 billion years ago, and how it evolved into what we see today.
In a study published in Nature Astronomy, scientists were analyzing a meteorite called LaPaz Icefield 02342, which was found in Antarctica in 2002. It is a type of primitive"carbonaceous chondrite" meteorite that formed about 3.5 million years ago, just beyond Jupiter. Nittler said:"Because this sample of cometary building block material was swallowed by an asteroid and preserved inside this meteorite, it was protected from the ravages of entering Earth's atmosphere. It gave us a peek at material that would not have survived to reach our planet's surface on its own, helping us to understand the early solar system's chemistry."
Romain Tartèse of the U.K.’s University of Manchester, who studies meteorites but who was not involved in the latest research, said the discovery was exciting because it provides evidence that material was being transported inward for millions of years after the solar system first formed.
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