Solar System: We may be older than we think

William Atkins
Friday, 27 August 2010 02:56

Science - Space

Solar system researchers at Arizona State University think our solar system could be up to 1.9 million older than its currently accepted age, which stands at about 4.56 billion years old. They studied a meteorite and formulated their own estimate of our age.

 

U.S. researcher Audrey Bouvier and U.S. cosmochemist Meenakshi Wadhwa are scientists from the Center for Meteorite Studies, School of Earth and Space Exploration, at Arizona State University (Tempe).

They studied meteorite Northwest Africa (NWA) 2364 and found that the age of the solar system could be up to 1.9 million years older than what we currently think - an age of 4.56 billion years old.

The summary of their study of this meteorite is published in the journal Nature Geoscience, which was published online on August 22, 2010 (doi: 10.1038/ngeo941).

Their paper is entitled 'The age of the Solar System redefined by the oldest Pb-Pb age of a meteoritic inclusion.'

The abstract to their paper states, 'The age of the Solar System can be defined as the time of formation of the first solid grains in the nebular disc surrounding the proto-Sun. This age is estimated by dating calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions in meteorites. These inclusions are considered as the earliest formed solids in the solar nebula.'

They also state, 'Here we present the ²⁰⁷Pb-²⁰⁶Pb isotope systematics in a calcium-aluminum-rich inclusion from the Northwest Africa 2364 CV3-group chondritic meteorite, which indicate that the inclusion formed 4,568.2'‰million years ago.'

Pb is the chemical symbol for the element lead. ²⁰⁷Pb and ²⁰⁶Pb are two stable isotopes of lead.

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