Meteorites Hold Secrets of Earth’s Formation

Meteorites Hold Secrets of Earth’s Formation

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Scientists attempting to better understand the formation and the present-day layering of planet Earth have turned to ancient meteorites — meteorites which they say could hold important clues to some of the Solar System’s earliest chemical processes.

Those meteorites are known as diogenites, and researchers from the Carnegie Institution, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the University of Maryland studied nine samples (seven from Antarctica and two from the African desert). Diogenites, they explained, may have come from the asteroid Vesta and are among the Solar System’s oldest remaining examples of heat-related chemical processing, Carnegie officials said in a recent statement.