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KOMPAS.com- A meteorit which was found last year on Sahara desert may be an example volcanic rock oldest in Solar system ever found.
“I have been researching meteorites for more than 20 years and this is probably the most fantastic new meteorite I have ever seen,” said Jean-Alix Barrat, a researcher from the University of Western Brittany in France, as quoted from New Scientist, Wednesday (10/3/2021).
And sure enough, the research team found that a meteorite called Erg Chech 002 or EC 002 is unlike any other meteorite that has been found before.
Analysis of rocks space This shows that the oldest chunk of meteorite in the Solar System is a type of andesite rock.
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On Earth, these rocks are mostly found in subduction zones, which are areas where tectonic plates collide, but they rarely appear in meteorites.
So far, most of the meteorites found on Earth are made of another type of volcanic rock called basalt.
Analysis of the meteorite’s chemical makeup also showed that EC 002 underwent a melting and hardening process nearly 4.6 billion years ago.
That means the EC 002 meteorite may be part of an ancient protoplanetary crust that broke off in the solar system’s past.
Quoting IFL Science, protoplanets themselves are the embryo of a planet.
Protoplanets formed when the gas and dust surrounding the young Sun grew into gravel and collided with each other.
It is very rare to find pieces of the crust because in the end protoplanets in the Solar System collide and turn into planets or fall into pieces.
“As we approach the beginnings of the Solar System, it will get more and more complicated to get samples. We probably won’t find any other samples that are older than this one,” Barrat said.
Also read: Experts Explain Why Meteorites Often Fall in Indonesia Recently
The analysis also revealed that the magma that formed EC 002 took at least 100,000 years to cool and harden again.
This event shows that the magma is very thick.
Further study of EC 002 will certainly help us understand how planets form.
The discovery of the oldest meteorite in the Solar System has been published in the journal Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences.
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