Solar system older than previously thought
AUG 23, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024608
SPACEcom : Researchers Audrey Bouvier and Meenakshi Wadhwa of Arizona State University have found that the solar system is 4.5682 billion years old—up to two million years older than previously thought. (The uncertainty in their estimate is around 0.4 million years.) The team, who published their results in Nature Geoscience , studied the lead isotopes in calcium-aluminum-rich mineral inclusions in a meteorite that landed in Morocco in 2004. Those inclusions were created when gases cooled to form the Sun and planets. Previous estimates had been based on the Allende meteorite that fell in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1969, which may have undergone more heating and deformation before striking Earth. Their results are important for further study of how the Sun and planets formed.
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
