New Research Overturns Existing Notions of Planet Creation from Meteorites

Hitherto held ideas about planetary formations have been turned on their head by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In a new study based on computer simulations, researchers have shown that meteorites may not have been building blocks of planets like Earth as is currently understood. Instead, they may have been by-products of planetary formations. Researchers found that collisions between proto-planets created during early years of the solar system, may have given rise to chondrules currently seen on meteorites. Chondrules are considered part of the building material, IB Times reported.

"This tells us that meteorites aren't actually representative of the material that formed planets - they're these smaller fractions of material that are the byproduct of planet formation. But it also tells us the early solar system was more violent than we expected: You had these massive sprays of molten material getting ejected out from these really big impacts. It's an extreme process," said a post doctoral fellow Brandon Johnson according to MIT News.

Researchers hypothesized that collision between proto-planets resulted in melting of some of the material which would later cool down to form chondrules, and in turn become part of meteorites.

The team simulated collisions between proto-planets of sizes ranging from an asteroid to the moon, only to learn that objects the size of moon formed within 10,000 years before chondrules appeared.

"If this finding is correct, then it would suggest that chondrites are not good analogs for the building blocks of the Earth and other planets. Meteorites as a whole are still important clues about what processes occurred during the formation of the solar system, but which ones are the best analogs for what the planets were made out of would change," said Fred Ciesla who was not associated with the research.