New studies of a rare type of meteorite show that material from close to the Sun reached the outer solar system even as the planet Jupiter cleared a gap in the disk of dust and gas from which the planets formed. The results add to an emerging understanding of how our Solar System formed and how planets form around other stars.

The consensus theory on how planets form is that they accrete from a disk of dust and gas that rotates around a new-formed star. Evidence for the composition of this protoplanetary disk in our own solar system comes from chondrites, a type of meteorite made up of smaller particles, or chondrules, that collected together like a cosmic dust bunny.

«If we understand transport, we can understand the properties of the disk and infer how the planets were built,» said Qingzhu Yin, professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis and coauthor on the paper.

The material in chondrites is extremely old, representing leftover dust and debris that from the very early solar system. Further evidence comes from rocks from the Earth and Moon and samples of cosmic dust and comet material collected by the Stardust mission and other space probes.

Researchers can work out approximately where and when these meteorites formed by measuring the ratios of isotopes of elements such as oxygen, titanium and chromium within them.

Previous work by Yin’s laboratory and others showed that meteorites fall into two broad groups by composition. Carbonaceous meteorites are thought to have originated in the outer solar system. Non-carbonaceous meteorites formed from the disk closer to the sun where carbon-based and other volatile compounds were baked away.

Story Source: Materials provided by University of California — Davis. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.