Astronomers have always believed the solar system began when the infant Sun was surrounded by a disk of gas, grit and dust. But the exact processes that led to the birth of the Sun remains unclear, along with how the solar system formed from this disk of protoplanetary materials.
Now, scientists have discovered a meteorite that provides evidence intense magnetic fields caused the formation of the solar system.
Researchers have carefully examined the Semarkona meteorite that crashed in India in 1940. This meteorite is classified as a chondrite and is believed part of an asteroid that broke-up due to cosmic collisions. Semarkona is probably the best preserved remnant from the birth of the solar system.
Researchers have extracted chondrules, which are small, rocky grains from the meteorite roughly a millimeter in diameter, from the Semarkona sample. Further analysis reveals the space rock remains in the original state it had the moment it was formed.
The meteorite is really primitive since it was formed some 4.5 billion years ago and not much have altered it, said Roger Fu from MIT’s department of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences. Its original properties are still intact and these provide clues about the formation of the solar system.
Fu and his team measured the magnetic strength of these grains and did calculations to determine the original magnetic field of the chondrules when they were formed billions of years ago.
The chondrules possess a magnetic field of around 54 microtesla, which is comparable to the Earth’s existing magnetic field that is also 100,000 times stronger than anything in space.
These findings show a magnetic field plays an important role in the accumulation process that led to the formation of the solar system. Scientists said the strength of these magnetic fields provided enough force to attract cosmic clouds and dust towards the Sun.
Without this type of process, the solar system wouldn’t exist, believes Jerome Gattacceca of the European Center for Research and Education in Environmental Sciences. He noted that without the magnetic field, all matter would just gravitate towards the Sun.
This new study was published in the journal, Science.