New Mineral Found In Meteorite

Virtucon writes "The new mineral was found embedded in the Allende meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969. Since 2007, geologist Chi Ma of Caltech has been probing the meteorite with a scanning electron microscope, discovering nine new materials including panguite. 'Panguite’s primordial nature means that it was actually around before the Earth and other planets formed, meaning it can help scientists learn more about the conditions in the cloud of gas and dust that gave rise to our solar system.'"

Comments

Re:Panguite’s primordial nature

[meglon]

Certainly they could, however, given the distance to the closest star system from us, the travel times, the odds of hitting something as small as our planet with something even smaller from that distance, plus given the uncertainties of what actually lies between those systems and how that medium would interact with anything traveling through it, and even the unknown variable of what it would take to eject such an item from the originating system in the first place (not all systems are the same)... one would be far safer to go with the simplest answer, instead of opting for the answer that is so incredibly remotely possible.

Just saying.... the simplest answer is usually the right one.

Re:And they know this how?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Wikipedia (I'd never taint my honor by RTFA):

"Panguite is in a class of refractory minerals that formed under the high temperatures and extremely varied pressures present in the early solar system, up to 4.5 billion years ago. This makes panguite one of the oldest minerals in the solar system. Zirconium is a key element in determining conditions prior to and during the solar system’s formation."

I'm no chemist, but from that it seems they know when it was formed because of the temperature/pressure required to join the elements together (now how they know how things were back then I don't know). But yeah, it's a pain when so-called journalists write but don't communicate much of anything.