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Magnetic Field In Meteorite Provides Clues About Formation of Solar System

Posted by samzenpus on from the in-the-beginning dept.

An anonymous reader writes Scientists have discovered a meteorite that provides evidence that intense magnetic fields caused the formation of the solar system. A meteorite called Semarkona crashed in northern India in 1940 and is now being studied for signs of primordial magnetic fields. Lead researcher, Roger Fu, a planetary scientist at MIT says: "It's a very primitive meteorite, which means that since it formed about 4.5 billion years ago, not much has happened to it, this means it preserves the properties it had when it first formed, helping shed light on that time." From the article: "This meteorite is made up of mostly tiny round pellets known as chondrules, which formed droplets that quickly cooled in space. According to the study, the scientists focused on these chondrules that possessed iron-bearing minerals, known as dusty olivine crystals, and if they appeared to have a magnetic field present while they were cooling, then the magnetic properties of these crystals might have recorded the strength of the magnetic fields."

26 comments

  1. Because annealing doesn't affect matnetism by disposable60 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's not like the annealing heat of descent wouldn't cause the material to take on the local field, right?

    --
    You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
    1. Re:Because annealing doesn't affect matnetism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The xkcd "What If?" article "Steak Drop" seems to say that while the outer surface may be charred and even blasted off, the interior remains completely untouched.

      Then again, IANA Astrophysicist, Cartoonist, or Chef.

    2. Re:Because annealing doesn't affect matnetism by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 4, Informative

      Think about how long it takes a meteor to descend through the atmosphere and decelerate to terminal velocity. It's a few seconds.

      Now, think about how quickly metal or rock conducts heat, and how quickly heat dissipates into moving air or solid ground.

      Nearly all the object's kinetic energy goes into compression heating of the atmosphere. Of what's left, nearly all goes into ablating the object's surface. When the object hits, its interior is still cold.

    3. Re:Because annealing doesn't affect matnetism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um, but I think OP was trying to build a case to justify sending people to Mars or something. Because we *need* to explore or some such romantic nonsense.

    4. Re:Because annealing doesn't affect matnetism by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 2

      Um, but I think OP was trying to build a case to justify sending people to Mars or something. Because we *need* to explore or some such romantic nonsense.

      It would appear that this says a lot more about your thought processes than about anything OP actually wrote.

    5. Re:Because annealing doesn't affect matnetism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, no, it says I know what kind of people post here and what they get excited about. Any justification for their Star Trek fantasies.

  2. Lead researcher, Roger Fu by Thanshin · · Score: 2

    Ironically, a lead researcher made a discovery on magnetism.

    (Thank you. I will be here all week. Tip your waitress.)
    (Yes, I did use the thousandfold cursed "Morissette irony" on purpose, to elicit rage, hair pulling and lamentations.)

    1. Re:Lead researcher, Roger Fu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ironically, a lead researcher made a discovery on magnetism.

      (Thank you. I will be here all week. Tip your waitress.)
      (Yes, I did use the thousandfold cursed "Morissette irony" on purpose, to elicit rage, hair pulling and lamentations.)

      Ironically, irony present in an article about iron-bearing meteorites.

  3. wait wait wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought the only way we could explore space is by sending people to the asteroid belt?

  4. Fucking magnets, how do they work? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    We need to have a serious discussion about this.

    1. Re:Fucking magnets, how do they work? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Sorry, didn't realize the expletive. Please remove.

    2. Re:Fucking magnets, how do they work? by rgbatduke · · Score: 3, Informative

      You mean, as in "read a physics textbook"?

      Seriously. Depending on how much physics you've already studied, the right place to start will vary. A passable (free) intro is in my free online physics textbook http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/C..., or wikipedia articles. A good intermediate treatment might be Griffiths' Classical Electrodynamics. If you want the pure quill uncut stuff, J. D. Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics is excellent, but it is not for the faint of heart or the wussy of PDE-fu.

      In a nutshell, parallel currents of electric charge attract; antiparallel charged currents repel, changing charged currents radiate electromagnetic energy, and there are electrostatic forces happening in there somewhere too, in the cases where the currents are produced by unbalanced moving charge. Oh, and there is a fair bit of twistiness to the magnetic fields (called "curl") and forces, and the currents in question in "magnets" (or the general magnetic susceptibility of materials) tend to be non-dissipative (quantum) nuclear, atomic, or molecular circulations of charge, not Ohm's law type currents in a resistor. Ferromagnets in particular are what is being referred to, and they are characterized by long range order and a "permanent" magnetization in the absence of an external field below a certain temperature.

      Hope this fucking helps:-)

      rgb

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    3. Re:Fucking magnets, how do they work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good observation of the magnetic affect, but not an explanation of _how_ it works

    4. Re:Fucking magnets, how do they work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An effectively complete description of an effect is an explanation of how something works in science. Otherwise, you could say there is nothing we know how it works, because you could keep asking "Why?" and asking how something works would be definitely pointless.

  5. gas giants' origins? by Champaklal · · Score: 1

    i believe it would also explain why gas giants are all far away from sun too

  6. Orientation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wouldn't an accreting body develop a spin of some sort? Subsequently, wouldn't a change in orientation during formation cause the fields (if any) to be erratic in orientation? And wouldn't the strength of magnetic field primarily be determined by prominence in the alignment of magnetic materials?

    Therefore, wouldn't a combination of the above more or less make it a total crapshoot to detect the strength of the solar system's magnetic field at formation?

    1. Re:Orientation? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

      The spinning body would align itself to the magnetic field. It would then solidify in that orientation.

  7. Does not show cause, only shows involvement by rcamans · · Score: 1

    RTFA does not use the word cause, but it does say "magnetic fields were large enough to be important in the accretion process". Wrong. The chondrules cooled in a strong magnetic field, but that does not mean that they were formed in space. There are just too many assumptions made, and leaps of faith, in the article to believe the scientists involved had impartiality. Bias showing in the cooling state of scientific hypothesizing. What it shows is that the chondrules cooled in a strong magnetic field. End of story. It does show that the chondrules had an interesting life, something the scientists were energized about, since maybe the scientists did not have an interesting life themselves.

    --
    wake up and hold your nose
    1. Re:Does not show cause, only shows involvement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because a lot of work on accretion processes has been done and theories proposing that magnetic fields were important angular momentum transport and this ties into that... it is therefore the result of the scientists compensating for life failures. So who is the one making too many assumptions here?

  8. Re: Makes no sense that by rickb928 · · Score: 1

    I can magnetize a rod of iron by hitting a rock with it.

    And you can, too.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  9. Really a question of: Where did chondrules form? by Xylantiel · · Score: 1

    The linked article is not really even an article, but I think the interesting science topic is that we don't understand where chondrules form. They are somehow formed in the early solar system by melting refrectory elements together. But how and where that melting occurs in not known (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chondrule#Formation.

    It is thought that the formation might be related to dissipation of magnetic fields in the protoplanetary disk or the young sun (so-called magnetic reconnection) but it is not clear. I expect this study is trying to test this type of hypothesis by attempting to ascertain the magnetic field in which the chondrules were formed.

    Note that this is NOT the magnetic field causing the formation of the solar system, as stated in the summary. I have no idea where the submitter or editor got that, as it is not in the (non-)article linked. Chondrule formation is a critical process for creating building blocks of planets, but it is pretty tricky to interpret that as the "cause of the formation of the solar system."

  10. EU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I will be interested to see more data come out of this, and how it fits in with the growing Electric Universe model. [queue angry mob]

    My understanding is that you need an electric current in order to have an electric field.

    “This discovery tells us that magnetic fields were large enough to be important in the accretion process that helped form the solar system. We had guessed that, but we had no evidence of that until now”.

    So the question for me is where did the electric currents involved come from? Maybe it was from magic space plazma lightning. I have no idea.