Magnetic fields are generated by matter that is electrically charged and moving around. In the very early solar system, the collapsing cloud of gas and dust could have whipped up a plasma of charged particles. As these charges spun through the developing disk, they could have produced and sustained a magnetic field.<\/p>\n
If this were the case, Weiss and his colleagues reasoned that such early magnetism would have affected material in the disk.\u00a0As this material condensed, tiny magnetic minerals would have locked in the strength of the magnetic field, preserving its original intensity over billions of years. If these minerals somehow made it to Earth for scientists to measure, their \u201cremanent magnetization\u201d would be evidence that a magnetic field indeed existed and could have played a role in shaping the solar system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In fact, the team has previously discovered evidence of a magnetic field, as early as 2 million years into the solar system\u2019s formation.\u00a0At that time, scientists believe that the sun was already in place, and that the planets were just starting to come together. Thus, the magnetic field Weiss measured likely played a part in the formation of the early planets.<\/p>\n
\u201cNowadays people don\u2019t debate whether magnetism is present when planets are forming. But the debate is around the very early solar system, before planets are forming, when there\u2019s just a disk,\u201d says Borlina, who led the new study as an MIT graduate student and is now an assistant professor at Purdue University. \u201cThat\u2019s where the debate still resides, and that\u2019s where we\u2019re operating now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Magnetic records<\/p>\n
For their new study, the team investigated whether a magnetic field could have existed even earlier in the solar system, when the sun was first coming together. They analyzed samples of\u00a0DOM 08006, a meteorite that was discovered in 2008 in Dominion Range, a mountain range located along the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Since it was first recovered, the meteorite has been studied extensively.\u00a0<\/p>\n
DOM 08006 is one of the most primitive meteorites discovered, and it contains mineral grains that date back to the earliest stages of solar system development, possibly even before the sun was formed. Surprisingly, the meteorite has managed to keep its original composition and minerals.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther meteorites went through many different processes over this 4.5 billion year history,\u201d Weiss says. \u201cThey were formed in the solar nebula, then added to bodies with water, then got destroyed, moved to the asteroid belt, and then landed here. But somehow, DOM has experienced less alteration than any other meteorite.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the early solar system did harbor a magnetic field, records of that field could still be in place in some of DOM\u2019s ancient mineral grains, including CAIs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know they are the oldest things we have of the early solar system,\u201d Borlina says. \u201cBut CAI\u2019s are very complex and are not all the same, even within a 1-millimeter piece of the meteorite. So we have to carefully identify what types they are.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
From small samples of the parent meteorite, the team isolated tiny grains and identified a handful of CAIs that contained inherently magnetic minerals such as iron. They then put the grains through a series of tests to measure any magnetism they still carry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The team identified traces of a magnetic field in the ancient grains. Based on their measurements, they estimate that a magnetic field, of about 150 to 600 microteslas, existed in the early solar system. This field strength is about three to 12 times greater than the Earth\u2019s magnetic field today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think these kinds of magnetic fields were helping to move gas from the protoplanetary disk, in toward this central star, the sun,\u201d Borlina says. \u201cGravity is also playing a role. But we are now showing that,\u00a0if you want to fully understand how the sun and planets formed, you should include magnetic fields in the ingredients that make them.\u201d<\/p>\n
This research was supported, in part, by NASA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Magnetic fields are generated by matter that is electrically charged and moving around. In the very early solar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[247359,247363,247360,247362,99379,202833,247361,90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-748562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-benjamin-weiss","tag-calcium-aluminum-inclusions","tag-caue-borlina","tag-dom-meteorite","tag-early-solar-system","tag-mit-eaps","tag-nebular-magnetic-field","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}