From stardust to pale blue dot: Carbon’s interstellar journey to Earth
We are made of stardust, the saying goes, and a pair of studies including University of Michigan research finds that may be more true than we previously thought.
The first study, led by U-M researcher Jie (Jackie) Li and published in Science Advances, finds that most of the carbon on Earth was likely delivered from the interstellar medium, the material that exists in space between stars in a galaxy. This likely happened well after the protoplanetary disk, the cloud of dust and gas that circled our young sun and contained the building blocks of the planets, formed and warmed up.
Carbon, Backbone of Life on Earth --Survived Vast Journeys from Cold, Dark Molecular Clouds in the Interstellar Medium
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From stardust to pale blue dot: Carbon s interstellar journey to Earth
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Analysis by UChicago scientists reverses earlier findings, suggests large temperature swings
A new analysis of ceramic chips embedded in meteorites suggests the formation of our solar system was not as quiet and orderly as we once thought.
A new study from University of Chicago scientists builds evidence that the baby solar system likely witnessed wild temperature swings and changing conditions contradicting the decades-old theory that the solar system had gradually and steadily cooled following the formation of the Sun.
Published Jan. 6 in
Science Advances, the study finds its answers in gifts from outer space. Because rocks on Earth are constantly pulled under tectonic plates, melted and reformed, they don’t offer much evidence for what our solar system looked like four and half billion years ago. Instead, scientists look to meteorites.