Glimpse of solar system’s birth
Scientists are tracking the violent convulsions in the giant cloud of gas and dust that gave birth to the solar system 4.5 billion years ago via a few tiny particles from comet Wild 2.
These convulsions flung primordial material billions of miles from the hot, inner regions of the gas cloud that later collapsed to form the sun, out into the cold, nether regions of the solar system, where they became incorporated into an icy comet.
“If you take a gas of solar composition and let it cool down, the very first minerals to solidify are calcium and aluminum-rich,” said Steven Simon, Senior Research Associate in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago.
And comet Wild 2 does contain these and other minerals formed at high temperatures. “That’s an indication of transport from the inner to the outer solar system, where comets are thought to have formed,” he said.
The study will be published in the Meteoritics and Planetary Science journal.
Either turbulence within the nebula, or a phenomenon called bipolar outflow from the early sun could account for the long-distance transport of cometary material, according to Simon and his Meteoritics co-authors.
Bipolar outflow results when the rotating disks that surround developing new stars jet gas from their polar regions. This phenomenon, has been observed by astronomers telescopically.
“That’s part of the so-called X-wind model, which is somewhat controversial,” Simon said, according to a University of Chicago press release. — Our Bureau
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