Pieces of a distant asteroid have helped reveal more about our solar system’s early life, according to scientists, according to RT.
Scientists have used samples from asteroid ‘Ryugu’ to learn more about how the asteroids around us formed, as well as the formation of the Earth.
The team from the International Physics Institute of Paris, the University of the city of Paris and the National Center for Scientific Research has discovered that the asteroid “Ryugu” is composed of “carbon chondrites (CI) similar to the Ivuna meteorite ” (Ivuna), which helps scientists better understand the source of the asteroid.
This carbonaceous chondrite (CI) belongs to the most chemically primitive meteorites thought to contain ingredients dating back to the formation of the solar system.
However, some of the isotopic signatures – for example: titanium and chromium – overlap with other carbonaceous chondrite groups, so the details of the association between Ryugu and carbonaceous chondrites (CI) are not yet well understood.
Carbon chondrites help shed light on our planet, too, as scientists believe Ryugu-like material from the outer solar system makes up up to 6 percent of Earth’s mass.
The new study represents the latest discovery from Ryugu, which is 300 million km from Earth.
And in the past two years, since Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft returned to Earth after sampling the asteroid, scientists have continued to find a myriad of new discoveries about “Ryugu,” which in turn have helped explain the story. of our solar system when it was much smaller than it is now.
Scientists have been able to examine objects from farther out in the solar system in the past, finding them after they have fallen to Earth in the form of meteorites.
But the Hayabusa2 mission marked the first time scientists have been able to observe such samples without going through the process of falling into the atmosphere and onto the planet.
