Related papers: Carbon Star Dust from Meteorites
This review provides an introduction to presolar grains - preserved stardust from the interstellar molecular cloud from which our solar system formed - found in primitive meteorites. We describe the search for the presolar components, the…
Chondrite meteorites are believed to represent the building blocks of the solar nebula, out of which our solar system formed. They are a mixture of silicate and oxide objects (chondrules and refractory inclusions) that experienced extremely…
The most abundant matrix minerals in chondritic meteorites, hydrated phyllosilicates and ferrous olivine crystals, formed predominantly in asteroids during fluid-assisted metamorphism. We infer that they formed from minerals present in…
Chondritic meteorites constitute the most ancient rock record available in the laboratory to study the formation of the solar system and its planets. Detailed investigations of their mineralogy, petrography, chemistry and isotopic…
Astronomical observations and analysis of stardust isolated from meteorites have revealed a highly diverse interstellar and circumstellar grain inventory, including a wide range of amorphous materials and crystalline compounds (silicates…
Carbonaceous chondrites are samples from planetesimals that formed 2-4 million years after solar system formation began. They consist of distinct dust components formed at different times and locations in the accretion disk and whose…
Nanodust, which undergoes stochastic heating by single starlight photons in the interstellar medium, ranges from angstrom-sized large molecules containing tens to thousands of atoms (e.g. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules) to grains…
Carbonaceous chondrites are some of the most primitive meteorites and derive from planetesimals that formed a few million years after the beginning of the solar system. Here, using new and previously published Cr, Ti, and Te isotopic data,…
Chondritic meteorites, the building blocks of terrestrial planets, are made of an out-of-equilibrium assemblage of solids formed at high and low temperatures, either in our Solar system or previous generations of stars. This was considered…
The obscuration of light from a distant galaxy has raised the possibility that a type of carbon dust existed in the earliest epochs of the Universe -- challenging the idea that stars had not yet evolved enough to make such material.
Meteorites, and in particular primitive meteorites (chondrites), are irreplaceable probes of the solar protoplanetary disk. We review their essential properties and endeavour to place them in astrophysical context. The earliest solar system…
Stardust grains recovered from meteorites provide high-precision snapshots of the isotopic composition of the stellar environment in which they formed. Attributing their origin to specific types of stars, however, often proves difficult.…
The zodiacal cloud is a thick circumsolar disk of small debris particles produced by asteroid collisions and comets. Here, we present a zodiacal cloud model based on the orbital properties and lifetimes of comets and asteroids, and on the…
It has been suggested that shock waves in the solar nebula formed the high temperature materials observed in meteorites and comets. It is shown that the temperatures at the inner rim of the solar nebula could have been high enough over a…
Chemical and chronological information preserved in meteorites permits the reconstruction of events and processes in the solar nebula from the formation of the first solids to the accretion of planetary bodies and their subsequent…
A high fraction of carbon bound in solid carbonaceous material is observed to exist in bodies formed in the cold outskirts of the solar nebula, while bodies in the terrestrial planets region contain nearly none. We study the fate of the…
Carbon is an essential element for a habitable world. Inner (r < 3 au) disk planetary carbon compositions are strongly influenced by supply and survival of carbonaceous solids. Here we trace the journey of carbon from the interstellar…
Our current understanding of interstellar dust is summarized at an introductory level. Submicron-sized interstellar dust grains absorb and scatter light, and reradiate the absorbed energy in the infrared. The grain population spans a range…
The wavelength dependences of interstellar extinction and polarization, supplemented by observed elemental abundances and the spectrum of infrared emission from dust heated by starlight, strongly constrain dust models. One dust model that…
During the late stages of their evolution, Sun-like stars bring the products of nuclear burning to the surface. Most of the carbon in the Universe is believed to originate from stars with masses up to a few solar masses. Although there is a…