Meteorite dating sets back age of planets by 15 million years

BANGALORE, MAY 22: The chance finding of a meteorite at Piplia Kalan village in the Thar Desert three years ago by local journalist Chaman Lal has helped scientists push back the formation of proto-planets or early planets by as many as 15 million years. The new find suggests that they formed as early as 5 million years into the evolution of the Solar System, as against what has till now been believed to be 20 million years after the Big Bang. Scientists of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, who examined this meteorite, have published their results in the latest issue of prestigious American journal Science. The find also provides the first-ever clue as to what was the heat source that kept these asteroids in a melted condition. Scientists have always been intrigued by what kept these early asteroids in a molten condition but they were never able to pinpoint the source for this huge amount of heat.

Now, G Srinivasan and his colleagues at PRL have found that it was a radioactive form ofaluminium, the slow decay of which supplied the enormous quantities of heat needed to keep these giant asteroids in molten condition. Probably much in the same way as heat is generated in large amounts after a nuclear explosion. Srinivasan says, "Understanding the origin of early planets and their subsequent evolutionary history is important to understand the earliest planet building phase in the solar system."

American scientists describe this finding as the smoking gun’ that has been eluding planetary scientists for a long time and describe it as the lucky finding’ that provides first hard piece of evidence of what melted large asteroids in the early solar system’.