Oldest Volcanic Rock Ever Found Reveals Secrets of the Early Solar System

Jakarta –

Analysis of the meteorite, named Erg Chech 002, reveals that this object is the oldest volcanic rock ever found, far surpassing anything from Earth. The findings also provide evidence that some of the early parts of the Solar System were much richer in the isotopes responsible for most of the heat than other parts, although we still don’t know why.

The sun, in the early days was not as bright and bright as it is today. However, this does not mean that the first planets that formed from the disk around them were cold. In addition to the heat released in the collision, radioactive isotopes were also more abundant at that time, and kept the first large bodies in the Solar System hot, often with liquid interiors. One isotope in particular, aluminum-26, is thought to play a very important role, possibly being the reason for today’s plate tectonics.

Today, the Earth’s core is heated primarily by the slow decay of uranium and thorium, and the same is true for the centers of other rocky bodies. However, four and a half billion years ago, aluminum-26 is thought to have played a much larger role.

Aluminum-26 breaks down into magnesium-26, releasing energy. At 705 thousand, its half-life is short enough to make it much more intensely hot than the same amount of uranium-235, but long enough to have a major effect in the first few million years of planet formation.

It’s thought that the protoplanetary disk from which the Solar System formed was enriched with aluminum-26 from nearby exploding stars, but astronomers still debate whether the isotopes were mixed evenly, or clumped together in areas.

To test this, we need to know the exact time of formation of the meteorite. Otherwise, we cannot say for sure whether an isotope formed in an area with a low aluminum-26 content, or a few million years younger, after most of the isotope had decayed.

Volcanic meteorites are easier to date than meteorites that accumulate on the surface of asteroids, so the discovery of Erg Chech 002 in the Sahara desert is a boon. Australian National University PhD student Evgenii Krestianinov and his co-authors have taken full advantage of these findings. They dated Erg Chech 002 with astonishing precision.

The origin of the Erg Chech 002 volcano means it originated in an object large enough to be geologically active. Several volcanic meteorites have been identified as coming from the asteroid Vesta before it was ejected in the collision. Others, including Erg Chech 002, clearly came from other objects that could not be identified, most likely because they were destroyed long ago.

Erg Chech 002 is extremely rich in lead and uranium, and this is no coincidence. Uranium undergoes a series of radioactive decays until it reaches the stable lead isotope. Once formed, the rock that became Erg Chech 002 would have had much more uranium, most of which had decayed into lead.

Different uranium isotopes decay at different rates, so by comparing the quantity of each isotope, and the ratio of the end products, geologists can calculate the age of a rock. Erg Chech 002 proved well suited to give the exact result, which was 4,565,560,000 years with an error of only 120,000 years.

By comparing the formation time of Erg Chech 002 with previous estimates of aluminum-26 concentrations, Krestianinov and co-authors concluded that the parent body must have had three to four times more aluminum-26 than a similar meteorite parent.

Unless the age or aluminum estimates of one meteorite or another are not very precise, this means that the clouds from which we form are less well-mixed than many people think.

This also means that when they merged, these protoplanets did not collect enough material from different regions to balance these differences. This greatly complicates efforts to model planet formation, but can also explain some of the anomalies.

For your information, the Erg Chech 002 piece is being sold on auction site eBay for a very low price. But now, knowing that this meteorite is so valuable, it seems that the stone fragments from outer space will become the target of collectors and the price will soar.

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(rns/rns)

2023-09-02 22:45:56
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