A COSMIC WINDOW INTO THE EARLY SOLAR SYSTEM

NWA 5717 is a remarkable meteorite that looks like a swirling nebula frozen within rock, with light areas dancing against a dark background. It may be no surprise, then, that NWA 5717, a primitive and almost entirely unheated chondrite, is in fact a physical record of the earliest days of our solar nebula, providing evidence for the ways that planets were formed in the protoplanetary disk. Namely, the light areas of this slice show minimal alteration, while the dark areas point to heavy alteration, a sign that particles may have been "clumping" together here in order to form a very early planetary body. This very meteorite slice, in fact, was used by researchers to study the formation of protoplanets (See Simon, J.I. et al below).

This meteorite represents the very earliest days of planetary accretion within the solar nebula, when chondrules were finding ways to come together to create larger bodies. The light, relatively unaltered chondrules, being held together by the more heavily altered dark chondritic material, are a beautiful, physical manifestation of the bღeginning of our solar system.

REFERENCES:

Simon, J.I. et al. “Particle Size Distributions in Chondritic Meteorites: Evidence for Pre-Planetesimal Histories.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 494 (2018): 69–82.