The most accurate laboratory measurements made of magnetic fields trapped in grains within a primitive meteorite are providing important clues to how the early solar systems evolved.
Shock waves traveling through the cloud of dusty gas around the sun was also a major factor in solar system's formation, according to a new study.
Though the solar system is believed to be formed around 4.5 billion years ago, the formation process left a lot of construction debris behind, according to an Arizona State University press release. Among the most useful pieces of debris are the oldest are the oldest types of meteorites, called the chondrites, which haven't changed much since they formed at the birth of the solar system.
Chondrites are built mainly from small stony grains, called chondrules that are barely a millimeter in diameter.
"Chondrules themselves formed through quick melting events in the dusty gas cloud -- the solar nebula -- that surrounded the young sun," researchers said in an Arizona State University statement. "As chondrules cooled, iron-bearing minerals within them became magnetized like bits on a hard drive by the local magnetic field in the gas. These magnetic fields are preserved in the chondrules even down to the present day."
Results appear in a paper published Nov. 13 in the journal Science. The lead author is graduate student Roger Fu of MIT, working under Benjamin Weiss. Steve Desch of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration is a co-author of the paper.
The study mapped the magnetic fields of the chondrule grains that came from a meteorite named Semarkona, which is a space rock weighing around a pound and a half that fell in India in 1940. Scientists found that the meteorite had a magnetic field, similar to that at Earth's surface, according to the release.
"The new experiments probe magnetic minerals in chondrules never measured before. They also show that each chondrule is magnetized like a little bar magnet, but with 'north' pointing in random directions," Desch, said in the statement.
This shows they became magnetized before they were built into the meteorite, not while sitting on Earth's surface, according to Desch.
"My modeling for the heating events shows that shock waves passing through the solar nebula is what melted most chondrules," Desch explains. The background magnetic field could be amplified by up to 30 times, depending on the strength and size of the shock wave.
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