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Our perception of early solar system has just been deformed. The researchers found a piece of comet – an object made up of ice and dust – inside a space rock known as the Stony Meteorite.
Researchers have discovered this strange find in a meteorite that shot down LaPaz Icefield Icefield in Antarctica, a favorite haunt for people searching for space rocks. Carbon-rich dust particles, very similar to those already present in comets, were included in the meteorite. said in a statement.
The discovery is interesting because comets and parent bodies of meteorites (also called asteroids) can come from very different regions of the solar system. Both types of small worlds come from the vast collection of gas and dust available in the young solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago. Comets tend to train far in the solar system, away from the heat of the sun, where the ice resides, while the asteroids are do more difficult things and can form almost anywhere.
Related: According to scientists, it takes more samples of comets to understand the history of the solar system
Meteorites occur when pieces detach larger space rocks and plunge into the earth's atmosphere before projecting to the surface of the planet. (When getting burned, it's called a meteor – this is only if a party destroys it that's called meteorite.) Most materials of a meteorite are burned before disappearing completely, making the comet dust extremely superficial for scientists. .
"I knew we were looking for something very rare," said Jemma Davidson, a researcher at Arizona State University, co-author of the new work, in a statement. "It was one of those exciting times for which you live as a scientist."
The analysis of the LaPaz meteorite suggests that this fragment of dust was captured very early in the history of the solar system, only 3 to 3.5 million years after the formation of the sun. Other chemical and elemental studies suggested that the dust particle probably came from the Kuiper Belt, a region of frozen objects beyond the orbit of Neptune from which come many comets.
A thorough study of this meteorite will reveal clues about the formation of the early solar system. For example, this particle of dust probably entered the interior of the meteorite as it migrated from the Kuiper belt to the region near Jupiter, where carbonaceous chondrite asbestos formed, as the parent of the meteorite La Paz. Carbonaceous chondrites formed early in the history of the solar system and their meteorites are among the rarest types found on Earth.
"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 the atmosphere entering into the Earth, "said in the same article the lead author of the study, Larry Nittler, cosmochemist at Carnegie University. declaration. "This gave us a glimpse of materials that would not have survived to reach the surface of our planet by themselves, helping us understand the chemistry of the primitive solar system."
A document based on the research was published on April 15 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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