Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
The dust grains that eventually coalesced into our solar system's planets bounced around like pinballs over vast distances nearly 4.6 billion years ago. The dust grains came from a rare type of meteorite known as a carbonaceous chondrite, which fell as a fireball near the village of Pueblito de Allende, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, on February 8, 1969. Several tons of material were scattered over an area measuring 48 km by 7 km. What makes the Allende meteorite so special is that it's a composite of materials that coalesed 30 nillion years before the Earth was formed when the Sun was still surrounded by the protoplanetary disk.