14 DAY TRIAL // A team of astronomers has recently determined that the solar system may in fact be 2 million years older than initially estimates.
In geological terms, this period of time is just the blink of an eye, but the refinement of previous calculations is bound to give experts a better understanding of how the solar system appeared and evolved in its earliest days.
The new investigation, conducted on a piece of meteor rock, established that the object was no less than 4.5682 billion years old, an age 1.9 million years older than previously established.
“We believe that, right now, this is the most precise and accurate date for the age of the solar system,” explains Arizona State University (ASU) expert Meenakshi Wadhwa.
He is also the coauthor of a new study detailing the investigation, which appears in the August 22 online issue of the esteemed scientific journal Nature Geoscience.
The object he and ASU expert Audrey Bouvier studied hit Earth in 2004. The meteorite was dubbed NWA 2364, and he was recovered from Morocco.
From the entire space rock, they analyzed a piece called a calcium-aluminum-rich inclusion (CAI), which revealed all the data they needed to know.
Planetary scientists believe that CAI was among the first solid materials to aggregate in the early days of the solar system. In other words, there is no other enduring matter from those times that is older than the inclusions.
“That's the power of geochemistry. You can make very, very precise measurements,” explains Wadhwa.
The expert adds that the new measurements represent an improvement on past estimates, but reveals that the past data were also derived from studying CAI in other space rocks.
The new discovery “gives us a better understanding of the type of environment the solar system evolved in,” Wadhwa explains further, quoted by Space.
Studying the CAI in NWA 2364 also revealed another interesting find. The team says that the meteorite contained an isotope that is believed to have been created by a nearby exploding supernova.
“Iron-60 is kind of a smoking gun. If present in certain abundances, it can only really be there because of a supernova injection,” adds Wadhwa.