Meteorite NWA 12264Credit: B. Hoefnagels/communities.springernature.com
Posted on 10/31/2025 11:06:55 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
A meteorite discovered in Northwest Africa... Scientists say this ancient rock -- formed more than 4.56 billion years ago -- proves that planet-building processes in the outer reaches of the solar system began just as quickly as they did closer to the Sun.
In a study published in Communications Earth & Environment, researchers analyzed a rare meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12264, revealing that the body it originated from -- a fully formed protoplanet beyond Jupiter -- was already active during the very dawn of the Solar System.
The findings challenge the prevailing assumption that outer Solar System planets formed more slowly due to cooler temperatures and higher ice content and instead suggest that planetesimal formation was a synchronized, system-wide phenomenon...
The dunite meteorite -- a rock type typically found in planetary mantles -- contains key isotopic clues indicating it formed on a large, layered protoplanet with a metal core and silicate mantle, much like Earth. Crucially, the radiometric dating of its minerals places its formation just a few million years after the birth of the Solar System itself.
Using high-precision lead-lead (Pb-Pb) and aluminum-magnesium (Al-Mg) dating techniques, scientists determined the age of NWA 12264 to be around 4,569.8 ± 4.6 million years, making it older than any previously studied rock from the outer Solar System.
The aluminum-magnesium method yielded a slightly younger age of 4,564.44 ± 0.30 million years, but both values are significantly earlier than those from other known outer system meteorites... clearly indicate that its parent body -- an ancient, now-shattered protoplanet -- must have accumulated, differentiated, and broken apart in rapid succession, likely within the first few million years of the Solar System's formation.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedebrief.org ...
Meteorite NWA 12264Credit: B. Hoefnagels/communities.springernature.com
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Yay me, nice twofer topic.
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It may have come from a planet not of our solar system that was obliterated by their sun’s super nova.....................
Interesting but ultimately this is all pure guesswork
That puts it at least one step ahead of your post.
Driftin’ Blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wGASeK3IIc
Drifting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRrEP_lpN_U
Only 5.8 years left. Says occasion cortex
How did this planet get smashed to small pieces?
It seems to me we’re fed regular updates from our Cargo Cult betters every 50 years or so, with each iteration spewing authoritatively from our sheepskinned academic betters as if the Cult’s lore just was but due for a slight tweaking.
In actuality, they’re the blind leading the blinded in the dark, and from what they do know, they try to squirrel away the shiniest marbles to maintain and/or increase their own advantage.
I don’t know how they are sure it came from a proto-planet beyond Jupiter. What happened to that body—did it become one of the moons of one of the outer planets?
It got turned into space confetti by impact or some other event we probably can’t know — *orrrrr* this particular bit (and probably many others) got blown away into new orbits by a large impact, and the rest of the planet is still out there, undiscovered. I’d guess the second one.
Thanks, that was good and nuts.
BTW, NWA 12264 was not discovered in Compton CA.
Maybe even impure guesswork.
Long long ago in a distant galaxy.
It could have come from another solar system, like ATLAS.
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