This Unusual Meteorite Flew Around in Space Before Earth Was Born

[Judi Lynn]

By Kimberly Hickok, Staff Writer | August 6, 2018 07:23am ET

- click for image of meteorite -

https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwMS8wNDIvb3JpZ2luYWwvTldBLTExMTE5LUEuanBn

The NWA 11119 meteorite is about the size of a baseball and is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old.
Credit: UNM Newsroom

Approximately 4.5 billion years ago, the catastrophic explosion of a massive star, a supernova, caused an immense cloud of cosmic dust and gas to come together and form our solar system. But exactly how the planets were built remains somewhat of a mystery to scientists.

Now, a newly discovered, 4.6-billion-year-old, sparkly, green meteorite that formed just before that explosion is helping scientists learn more about how the solar system's planets were pieced together.

The remarkable, baseball-size space rock, called Northwest Africa (NWA) 11119, was acquired by a meteorite dealer in Africa in 2016. That dealer sent the specimen to Carl Agee, a planetary geologist and meteorite curator at the University of New Mexico. Agee wasn't sure if the rock was a meteorite (which would mean it came from space), so he asked his doctoral student Poorna Srinivasan to analyze the object. [Photo Gallery: Images of Martian Meteorites]

At first, both Agee and Srinivasan were skeptical that the rock had come from beyond our planet. "We did not think this rock was a meteor at all. We thought it was from Earth," Srinivasan told Live Science. But after closer examination, she said, "we saw that this could, in no way, be from Earth." While the rock closely resembled volcanic rocks on Earth, its chemical composition indicated it was definitely from space, and it wasn't just an ordinary meteorite, the researchers found.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/63258-oldest-igneous-meteorite.html

[htuttle]

1. Does this imply that there was a previous *planetary* system near here?

I've known since Carl Sagan clued me into the fact that we are all products of a previous supernova, since we have elements higher up in the periodic table than just iron or so.

But I hadn't considered that there may have been planets in the vicinity at the time. I suppose, if Earth is 4.5-ish billion years old and the known universe is about 13.7 billion years old, then there would have been plenty of time for another supernova to have gone off in the vicinity, so that the star that went supernova before WE showed up had rocky planets comprised of higher elements to...explode with?

whew....Not sure if i'm understanding tha correctly at all.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Yes. In the early Universe,

a few hundred million years in, the first generation stars began forming, and were likely to have been red giants, that lived fast and died young. They are also known as Population III stars, somewhat confusingly, as newer stars like our sun are known as Population I or Population II stars. The names have to do with just how old they are and what elements they contain. Our sun is considered a Population II star.

My astronomer sun used to do research into the evolution of galaxies, which is how I know about this stuff. A Google search will uncover tons of information.

[cstanleytech]

5. "My astronomer "sun" used to do research into the evolution of galaxies" So he must be very bright!!

Sorry, I couldn't resist lol
I do the same thing all the time especially when I use my phones voice to text option.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. Aaarrggghhh!

Stupid typo.

Yes, he's bright but not that shining!

I'm on a computer, no auto-correct, so I have NO excuse.

I hope everyone else who reads it is amused.

[Sancho]

3. Kryptonite?

[Igel]

4. Perhaps a chunk of pre-Thera Earth?

Or Thera?

Or the remains of some other planet that was formed in a near-Earth orbit before being smashed and reformed as Earth?