It was thought that the internal protopianettes of the Solar System were older than the external ones. Instead they would have formed all in the same phase.
The powders of a half -ethical meteorite recovered by a seller in Morocco could rewrite a piece of the history of the Solar System: the composition and age of the celestial rock reveal that, unlike how to think, i protopynets of the innermost part of our planetary system were formed more or less in the same period as the most external ones. The research was published on Nature Communications, Earth & Environment.
Protopianeti: what they are and why they are studying
The protopianets are small celestial bodies that according to astronomers would have aggregated Starting with powders and primordial rock objects During the formation of the Solar System, inside the growth disk of the solar nebula (the most accepted model to explain the origin of the sun and the planets that orbit you around).
From the growth process of the protopianets and the next differentiation Of the elements that made them, the celestial bodies would be formed “strati” (with metal nucleus, cloak of silicate and basaltic crust) rocky of the solar system. Therefore, understanding the times when these processes took place is essential to understand how solar planets were formed, including the earth.
Coming from afar
Part of the material not collected in the protopianeti still remains in the form of comets, meteoroids and asteroids. A group of scientists led by Ben Rider-Stakes, of the Open University of Milton Keynes, in the United Kingdom, analyzed the dusts of a meteorite called Northwest Africa 12264, collected with the permission of the owners for research purposes. The relationship between chromium and oxygen in its composition, a parameter that varies in a predictable way within the sun system, proved that the meteorite had originated from a protopynet of the most external part of the system.
So far it has always been assumed that the growth process of the planets of which the protopianets represent a phase had occurred in slightly different times in the internal part of the solar and external system, namely Beyond the main band or band of asteroidsbetween the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
It was estimated that The most internal protopianettes had trained 4.566 billion years ago and the outermost ones 4.563due to the highest content of water and ice inside them, which would have slowed down the fusion of their nucleus.
Certainties under discussion
As explained on New Scientistthis three-four millions of years has always been a certainty for those who study the history of the Solar System. But it is no longer: the meteorite at the center of the new study, undoubted from beyond the main band, would have approximately 4.564 billion years; It would therefore be older than it believed, with an age similar to that of the basaltic crusts of the most internal sunscreen.
Although, on events of 4 billion years ago, a difference of two or three million years may not seem so relevant, it is actually quite important for reconsider the sequence of events that gave rise to the Solar System And to our planet. In addition, the discovery could improve the understanding of how extrasolar planets have been formed that we will always be better able to observe.
