This little meteor found in the Sahara desert in 2020 is older than our own planet

This little meteor found in the Sahara desert in 2020 is older than our own planet

It is the oldest known example of magma from space, and is about 4.565 million years old. In other words, we are looking at a piece of material from space older than planet Earth itself .

As if that were not enough, very little is done, in May 2020, in Adrar, Algeria.

Remains of a protoplanet

As a new study published in PNAS reveals, this chunk of space magma, named Erg Chech 002 (EC 002), likely originated in our early solar system from the crust of a protoplanet, a large rocky body in the process of becoming a planet.

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EC 002 is an achondrite, a type of meteorite that comes from a parent body with a distinct crust and core, and its chemical composition reveals that it emerged from a partially molten magma deposit in the parent body’s crust .

To date, no object with similar spectral characteristics has been identified, as stated by the researchers who conducted the study:

This meteorite is the oldest magmatic rock analyzed to date and sheds light on the formation of the primordial crusts that covered the oldest protoplanets.