Large meteorite crystals of Erg Chech 002 suggest that the rock cooled slowly.
Darryl Pitt / Maine Museum of Mining and Gem
Erg Chech 002 (abbreviated to EC 002) is the name given to a meteorite found in Adrar, Algeria, in May 2020, with a “slightly rough, tan and beige” and “green” texture. larger, yellow-green and so common yellow-brown crystals “, according to a description by the Lunar and Planetary Institute. When Jean-Alix Barrat and his collagues at the University of Western Brittany in France analyzed the rock, they discovered that it was unlike any other meteorite ever discovered. Their findings are published in the journal PNAS.
The large pyroxene crystals and their chemical production suggest that EC 002 is an igneous rock, a type of rock that forms when magma (molten rock) cools and crystallizes. With an age of about 4.6 billion years, just 2 million younger than the solar system, it is the oldest example of magma from space.
The first planetesimals in our early solar system were created when dust in the solar nebula entered a kilometer-sized celestial body. As they orbited the sun, the seaplanes collided, disintegrating and regenerating in the first protoplanets. As the protoplanets began to cool and harden, they differentiated into distinct layers – a dense core, an interior made up of iron-nickel alloy, a garment made up of heavy iron-magnesium silicates and bark composed mainly of plagioclase, sodium / calcium -magnesium silicate. Many of these rocky protoplanets existed in the first few million years of the solar system, but subsequent disasters reduced their number, to only four – Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars.
Most stone meteorites found on Earth are made of a type of magmatic rock called basalt. Basalt is the most common rock on Earth, formed directly by the crystallization of feldspar, pyroxen, olivine and quartz from magma rich in iron and silica. But EC 002 is similar to a magical rock called andesite which, on Earth, is found mainly in movement zones. Here, partial melting of ancient volcanic and sedimentary rocks, combined with water, forms a more diverse type of rock, composed of plagioclase, amphibians, and micas; sometimes with very little pyroxenes and quartz.
This means that EC 002 may have been part of the crust of an ancient protoplanet with volcanism, before it erupted early in solar history. The appearance of an asteroid or meteorite is not known as EC 002, which indicates that almost none of the protoplanetary memories exist yet: almost all of them have been absorbed into or on the modern planets break them into pieces.