By: Nour Hany
A significant discovery has given us a chance to know more about the early stages of planet formation and the solar system's earliest days. A body that could be a baby planet that did not survive was found in the desert sands of Algeria. After analyzing the rock's age and composition “not only is the meteorite known as Erg chech 002 older than Earth, it formed volcanically—suggesting that it could have once been part of the crust of an object known as a protoplanet”.
It was discovered in May of last year in the Erg Chech sand sea in southwestern Algeria; it weighs 70 pounds and consists of several chunks of rocks. “It was fairly quickly identified as unusual; rather than the chondritic composition of most recovered meteorites—which form when bits of dust and rock stick together—its texture was igneous, with pyroxene crystal inclusions. It was therefore classified as an achondrite, a meteorite made of what seems to be volcanic material, originated on a body that has undergone internal melting to differentiate the core from the crust—a protoplanet, one of the middle stages of planet formation”.
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Only a few thousand of the tens of thousands of meteorites have been identified according to the Meteoritical Bulletin Database to be achondrites. We will not be able to know much about diversity of protoplanets in the early Solar System, as most of these achondrites are basaltic in composition and come from one of two parent bodies.
However, EC 002 is not basaltic; it is a type of volcanic rock that is known as andesite. It makes EC 002 extremely rare, and gives us a new path for understanding planet formation. “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,” as written in the researchers' paper.
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