SYDNEY, July 1 (Xinhua) — An Australian study has found that the rapid loss of Antarctic sea ice is directly triggering the collapse of the continent’s ice shelves, establishing a clear link between shrinking sea ice and dramatic ice shelf fractures.
The study tracked sea ice, ocean swells, and ice shelf conditions for years preceding three major calving events, revealing prolonged sea ice loss 6-18 months beforehand and collapse of protective “landfast” ice weeks prior to break-off, according to a release from the University of Melbourne on Tuesday.
The research team, led by the Universities of Melbourne and Adelaide, developed mathematical models quantifying how Southern Ocean swells flex weakened ice shelves once sea ice diminishes, the release said.
“Sea ice is retreating at an unprecedented rate all around Antarctica and our work suggests this will put further pressure on already thinned and weakened ice shelves,” said University of Melbourne Professor Luke Bennetts.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet, with the potential to raise sea levels by over 50 meters, blankets the continent. Its floating ice shelves slow glacier flow, but rapid sea ice loss now threatens these vital barriers, accelerating the risk of global sea-level rise, according to the study published in Nature Geoscience.
With no regular monitoring of ocean waves in Antarctic sea ice and ice shelves, scientists use mathematical models to study how swells, sea ice loss, and ice shelf changes are linked, the study found. Enditem
SYDNEY, July 1 (Xinhua) — An Australian study has found that the rapid loss of Antarctic sea ice is directly triggering the collapse of the continent’s ice shelves, establishing a clear link between shrinking sea ice and dramatic ice shelf fractures.
The study tracked sea ice, ocean swells, and ice shelf conditions for years preceding three major calving events, revealing prolonged sea ice loss 6-18 months beforehand and collapse of protective “landfast” ice weeks prior to break-off, according to a release from the University of Melbourne on Tuesday.
The research team, led by the Universities of Melbourne and Adelaide, developed mathematical models quantifying how Southern Ocean swells flex weakened ice shelves once sea ice diminishes, the release said.
“Sea ice is retreating at an unprecedented rate all around Antarctica and our work suggests this will put further pressure on already thinned and weakened ice shelves,” said University of Melbourne Professor Luke Bennetts.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet, with the potential to raise sea levels by over 50 meters, blankets the continent. Its floating ice shelves slow glacier flow, but rapid sea ice loss now threatens these vital barriers, accelerating the risk of global sea-level rise, according to the study published in Nature Geoscience.
With no regular monitoring of ocean waves in Antarctic sea ice and ice shelves, scientists use mathematical models to study how swells, sea ice loss, and ice shelf changes are linked, the study found. ■
The story of Earth’s origins lies hidden in ancient stones, forged in a time of intense formation and volcanic activity. Recently, a groundbreaking discovery in northern Quebec has shed new light on the planet’s earliest days. Scientists have confirmed the presence of the oldest known rocks on Earth in a region near the village of Inukjuak, Nunavik. This remarkable find provides a rare glimpse into the Hadean eon, a mysterious and largely unknown chapter in Earth‘s history. The discovery has sparked intense scientific interest, offering new insights into the planet’s formation and evolution. It brings us closer to understanding the Earth’s unstable beginnings.
Oldest rocks found in Northern Quebec
According to earth.com, a groundbreaking study published in the journal Science has revealed the discovery of the oldest known rocks on Earth in northern Quebec, offering a rare glimpse into the planet’s earliest history. Collected in 2017 near the village of Inukjuak, Nunavik, these ancient rocks have sparked intense scientific interest due to their unusual properties and old composition. The research team employed advanced methods to determine the rocks’ age, settling a long-standing debate that had dated the rocks to anywhere between 3.75 and 4.3 billion years old. The team’s breakthrough came when they confirmed that intrusive rocks cutting through the volcanic layers were 4.16 billion years old, implying that the volcanic rocks themselves are even older.This remarkable find offers a rare glimpse into the Hadean eon, a period of Earth’s history marked by intense volcanic activity and a hostile environment.
How scientists accurately dated 4.16 billion-year-old rocks
To determine the age of the rocks, scientists employed radiometric dating, a precise technique that measures time based on the natural decay of elements within the rocks. They focused on samarium and neodymium, elements that undergo a slow and predictable transformation, with samarium decaying into neodymium at a known rate. By analysing the current ratio of these elements, scientists can calculate when the rock originally formed. The team used two independent isotope systems, both of which yielded the same result: the rocks solidified approximately 4.16 billion years ago. This method provides an accurate and reliable way to date ancient rocks, allowing scientists to reconstruct the Earth’s history.
Hadean Eon made Earth a planet, but it wasn’t ready for life yet
The Hadean eon marked the violent and chaotic birth of Earth, around 4.6 billion years ago, with intense heat and volcanic activity. The planet was a molten rock, pummeled by space debris, and massive impacts likely shaped its formation, including the creation of the Moon. The surface was a scorching lava ocean with extreme volcanic activity, and the atmosphere consisted of toxic gases and steam. Despite these hostile conditions, Earth was setting the stage for life. As the Hadean eon came to a close around 4 billion years ago, the planet began to cool, forming a solid crust and oceans from volcanic steam and comet impacts. Ancient zircon crystals even suggest that water may have existed earlier than previously thought, slowly making the planet habitable, though devoid of life and fossils at this stage.Also read | Mice with two fathers? Scientists create fertile mice using DNA from two fathers
Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.
In the 1800s, astronomers were mystified by the discovery of stars that displayed highly unusual emission lines. It was only after 1868, when scientists discovered the element helium, that astronomers were able to explain the broad emission bands due to the presence of helium in these stars.
Over time, these stars became known as Wolf-Rayet stars (Charles Wolf was a French astronomer, and helium was first detected by the French scientist Georges Rayet and others), and astronomers came to understand that they were the central stars within planetary nebulae, and continually ejecting gas at high velocity.
This gives Wolf-Rayet stars a distinctive appearance in the night sky. And this week, Chris McGrew has shared a photo of WR 134—a variable Wolf-Rayet star about 6,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus—which he captured from a dark sky location in southwestern New Mexico.
“The stellar winds are blowing out the blue shell of ionized oxygen gas visible in the middle of the image,” McGrew said. “This is a deep sky object that has been imaged countless times, and I get why. Ever since I saw it for the first time, it’s been high on my list. For years I didn’t have the skies or the time, but I finally got the chance to go after it.”
Source: Chris McGrew
Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.
amino acids: Simple molecules that occur naturally in plant and animal tissues and that are the basic building blocks of proteins.
bacteria: (singular: bacterium) Single-celled organisms. These dwell nearly everywhere on Earth, from the bottom of the sea to inside other living organisms (such as plants and animals). Bacteria are one of the three domains of life on Earth.
chemical: A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (bond) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a chemical made when two hydrogen atoms bond to one oxygen atom. Its chemical formula is H2O. Chemical also can be an adjective to describe properties of materials that are the result of various reactions between different compounds.
corpse: The body of a dead human. Also sometimes used to describe the remains of some inanimate object (such as a star).
dimethyl disulfide: A pair of methanethiol molecules that have been linked together. The result is a very stinky chemical, which smells like rotting meat. It’s toxic to many organisms. That’s led to dimethyl disulfide being developed as a soil fumigant that farmers can use to kill weeds, parasitic nematodes (tiny roundworms) and plant pathogens that live in soil.
DNA: (short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. It is built on a backbone of phosphorus, oxygen, and carbon atoms. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.
dung: The feces of animals, also known as manure.
duplication: The process of copying something.
evolution: (v. to evolve) A process by which species undergo changes over time, usually through genetic variation and natural selection. These changes usually result in a new type of organism better suited for its environment than the earlier type. The newer type is not necessarily more “advanced,” just better adapted to the particular conditions in which it developed. Or the term can refer to changes that occur as some natural progression within the non-living world (such as computer chips evolving to smaller devices which operate at an ever-faster speed).
gene: (adj. genetic) A segment of DNA that codes, or holds instructions, for a cell’s production of a protein. Offspring inherit genes from their parents. Genes influence how an organism looks and behaves.
halitosis: This is the medical term for bad breath. It’s not a disease but a symptom of some stinky chemistry occurring in the mouth. It may trace to diet (such as smelly foods, such as garlic) or the stinky emissions of bacteria responsible for a range of conditions, but especially for diseased gums or teeth.
molecule: An electrically neutral group of atoms that represents the smallest possible amount of a chemical compound. Molecules can be made of single types of atoms or of different types. For example, the oxygen in the air is made of two oxygen atoms (O2), but water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (H2O).
oral: An adjective that refers to things in or affecting the mouth.
organism: Any living thing, from elephants and plants to bacteria and other types of single-celled life.
pollinate: To transport male reproductive cells — pollen — to female parts of a flower. This allows fertilization, the first step in plant reproduction.
shrub: A perennial plant that grows in a generally low, bushy form.
species: A group of similar organisms capable of producing offspring that can survive and reproduce.
View larger. | This image shows a clay-rich mesa in Hellas basin on Mars. A new study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin shows that such clay deposits, widespread on Mars, formed alongside stable standing bodies of liquid water on ancient Mars. The clays on Mars could preserve traces of ancient microbial life, if it ever existed. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UArizona/ University of Texas at Austin.
Clays are ideal for preserving traces of ancient life on Earth. Could the same be true on Mars?
Layers of clay, up to hundreds of feet thick, are common on Mars. A new study from a team of researchers in the U.S. shows they formed alongside standing bodies of liquid water on ancient Mars.
This environment was likely stable enough for microbes to live in, if they ever existed.
Clays on Mars
Clays are some of the best kinds of terrain to preserve traces of ancient life, at least on Earth. They are rich in minerals and require water to form. So what about on Mars? A team of researchers, led by the University of Texas at Austin, conducted a new study of thick clay layers on Mars. The researchers said on June 16, 2025, that most of the clay layers formed alongside standing bodies of surface liquid water, such as lakes. This environment could have been calm and stable enough to provide an ideal habitat for microbes.
These clay layers can be up to hundreds of feet deep. And they can be found in many locations on Mars. So, how did they form?
The researchers published their peer-reviewed findings in Nature Astronomy on June 16, 2025.
Thick clay layers on Mars
Clays are common on Mars. In fact, there are widespread layers of clay all over the planet. These layers are also thick, up to hundreds of feet deep. They are similar to thick layers of clay in tropical regions on Earth. The Martian clays formed billions of years ago, when the planet was much wetter than it is today.
And on Earth, clays can preserve traces of ancient life. Is that also the case for Mars?
They Might Be ClaysThis observation targets a region of layered materials exposed along the northern edge of the Hellas Basin. These layers have a light tone, suggesting the presence of clays.uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_08…NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona#Mars #science #NASA
Rhianna Moore at the University of Texas at Austin is the lead author of the new study about clays on Mars. Image via Science and Technology Institute.
A stable, habitable environment
The thick clay deposits are rich in minerals. Combined with the adjacent bodies of water, they could have been well-suited not only for preserving traces of past life, but also sustaining stable, habitable conditions for microbial life billions of years ago. Lead author Rhianna Moore at the University of Texas’ Jackson School of Geosciences said:
These areas have a lot of water but not a lot of topographic uplift, so they’re very stable. If you have stable terrain, you’re not messing up your potentially habitable environments. Favorable conditions might be able to be sustained for longer periods of time.
With this in mind, the researchers examined images and other data from 150 known clay deposits on Mars. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) had previously mapped out the locations of these clay layers. Most of the clays are near former lakes and are similar to clay deposits on Earth. Co-author Tim Goudge is an assistant professor at the Jackson School’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He explained:
On Earth, the places where we tend to see the thickest clay mineral sequences are in humid environments, and those with minimal physical erosion that can strip away newly created weathering products. These results suggest that the latter element is true also on Mars, while there are hints at the former as well.
View larger. | Map of clay deposits on Mars. The white outlines mark basin boundaries. Image via Moore et al./ Nature Astronomy/ EurekAlert!.
Formation of clays on Mars similar to Earth, yet different
Indeed, the clays are further evidence that Mars was once much more Earthlike. But, in addition, they also reveal distinct differences. The reason has to do with plate tectonics. Earth’s crust is divided into plates that can move on top of the mantle below. They expose fresh rock that interacts with water and carbon dioxide. Mars, however, never had plate tectonics.
Also, when Mars’ volcanoes released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere eons ago, there was no source of fresh rock for the gas to interact with. So consequently, it just lingered in the atmosphere. As a result, the planet became warmer and wetter. The researchers said that is how these Martian clays likely formed. The end product was similar to clays on Earth, but the formation process was a bit different.
Puzzle of the missing carbonates
The lack of fresh rock could also help explain another Martian mystery: the seeming lack of extensive carbonates. Carbonates are chemical compounds derived from carbonic acid or carbon dioxide. The lack of newly created fresh rock could have impeded the chemical reactions needed to form carbonate rock. Then, the ongoing formation of clays might have also contributed to the lack of carbonates. It would have sucked up water and sequestered chemical byproducts in the clay. As a result, this would have prevented them from leaching out into the wider environment, where they could react with the surrounding geology. As Moore noted:
It’s probably one of many factors that’s contributing to this weird lack of predicted carbonates on Mars.
However, on that note, another international team of researchers said last April that NASA’s Curiosity rover found rich deposits of carbonates in rocks in Gale crater. The evidence suggests there might indeed be a lot of carbonates on Mars after all, which just haven’t been identified yet.
Bottom line: A new study shows that thick layers of clays on Mars formed close to bodies of water like lakes. This might have provided a stable environment for life.
Source: Deep chemical weathering on ancient Mars landscapes driven by erosional and climatic patterns
Via Texas Geosciences/ The University of Texas at Austin
Read more: New discovery of carbonates on Mars could solve big mystery
Read more: Ancient ‘honeycomb’ mud on Mars boosts chances for life
Paul Scott Anderson
View Articles
About the Author:
Paul Scott Anderson has had a passion for space exploration that began when he was a child when he watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. He studied English, writing, art and computer/publication design in high school and college. He later started his blog The Meridiani Journal in 2005, which was later renamed Planetaria. He also later started the blog Fermi Paradoxica, about the search for life elsewhere in the universe.
While interested in all aspects of space exploration, his primary passion is planetary science and SETI. In 2011, he started writing about space on a freelance basis with Universe Today. He has also written for SpaceFlight Insider and AmericaSpace and has also been published in The Mars Quarterly. He also did some supplementary writing for the iOS app Exoplanet.
He has been writing for EarthSky since 2018, and also assists with proofing and social media.
A representational image shows a galaxy. — Nasa/File
Astronomers have found a distant galaxy referred to as a “cosmic fossil” that has stayed virtually unchanged, or “frozen in time,” for billions of years.
Just as dinosaur fossils on Earth help us understand the history of life, this cosmic fossil, called KiDS J0842+0059, provides important insights into the universe’s evolution, reported Space.com.
A cosmic fossil is a galaxy that has avoided significant collisions or interactions with other galaxies, allowing it to serve as a pristine time capsule for studying the characteristics of early galaxies.
Recent studies using data from the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) have shown that this galaxy has remained largely unaltered for approximately 7 billion years.
“We have discovered a galaxy that has been ‘perfectly preserved’ for billions of years, a true archaeological find that tells us how the first galaxies were born and helps us understand how the universe has evolved to this day,” team co-leader and National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) researcher Crescenzo Dove said in a statement.
“Fossil galaxies are like the dinosaurs of the universe: studying them allows us to understand in which environmental conditions they formed and how the most massive galaxies we see today evolved.”
KiDS J0842+0059, situated about 3 billion light-years from Earth, was discovered in 2018 through the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS).
Astronomers used images from the Very Large Telescope Survey Telescope (VST) to determine the galaxy’s size and mass, with these measurements further refined using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its X-Shooter instrument.
Washed foraminifera being picked for computer tomography and geochemical analysis.
Scientists at the University of Southampton have developed a new way of analysing fossils allowing them to see how creatures from millions of years ago were shaped by their environment on a day-to-day basis for the first time.
The research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences could revolutionise our understanding of how character traits driven by environmental changes shaped evolutionary history and life on earth.
It could help scientists to understand how much of a species’ evolutionary journey is down to ‘nature vs nurture’.
Researchers from the University of Southampton studied the fossilised remains of prehistoric plankton using high-resolution 3D scanning, like a medical CT scan, to examine tiny fossil shells about the size of a grain of sand.
These plankton, called foraminifera or ‘forams’ for short, are tiny floating seashells that still live in the ocean today. Their shells are made of calcium carbonate and grow every few days by adding a new chamber to their shell in a spiralling pattern.
These chambers act a little like the rings of a tree trunk, providing a permanent record of the growth and lived environment of forams over time.
The shells’ chemical composition also tells us about the conditions the organism lived in, including the chemistry, depth and temperature of the water.
“The fossil record provides the most powerful evidence of biodiversity change on Earth, but it traditionally does so at a scale of thousands and millions of years,” says Dr Anieke Brombacher , lead author of the paper how carried out the research at the University of Southampton and now works at the National Oceanography Centre.
“These fossils however act a bit like chapter summaries of a species’ evolutionary story. This new way of analysing them lets us read the pages within each chapter – allowing us to see how individual organisms adapted to their changing environment, not over the course of generations but within an individual life span at day-to-day resolution.”
The key advance the researchers developed was to combine highly advanced CT scanning with chemical analysis by laser ablation techniques. This combination of methods meant the team was able to ‘zoom in’ and ‘read’ the individual pages of those chapters to reveal how the forams grew and estimate the environment they experienced while growing.
CT models of internal or external growth structures, as well as shell thickness, of individual foraminifera.
The growth rates of all three species were similar at low temperatures, but one species grew much faster in higher temperatures despite reaching the same average size.
“If you’re a foram, temperature appears to be a bigger determinant of your growth rate than even how old you are,” says Dr Brombacher.
“Temperatures change throughout the depth of the ocean water column so being able to optimise growth at different temperatures would have allowed each foram to live in a greater variety of habitats.”
James Mulqueeney a PhD researcher from the University of Southampton and co-author of the study said: “We also found that of the two species with similar environmental sensitivities, one was able to reach the same size but with a thinner shell, indicating a lower energetic cost and potential evolutionary advantage.”
Researchers say the same analysis techniques could be applied to other creatures which preserve their environmental and lifespan information including ammonoids, corals and bivalves like clams, oysters and mussels.
“This sort of data is routine in how we study adaptation in modern populations but has only now been gathered for fossils. By bringing together experts and facilities across the University of Southampton, we’ve been able to make progress on a foundational question in biology that wouldn’t have been possible within a single discipline,” says Prof Thomas Ezard , supervising author on the paper from the University of Southampton.
The research is part of a wider project which aims to scale up the analysis across a wider sample of two thousand plankton specimens to determine if a species’ adaptive flexibility is likely to lead it to diverge into separate, distinct species over time.
Detecting environmentally dependent developmental plasticity in fossilised individuals is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is available online.
The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
/Public Release. This material from the originating organization/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).View in full here.
by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
As summer deepens in the Northern Hemisphere, a familiar constellation rises with the galactic core of the Milky Way each evening: Scorpius the Scorpion. One of the twelve zodiacal constellations, Scorpius contains many notable objects, making it an observer’s delight during the warmer months. Here are some items to spy in July:
Antares: referred to as “the heart of the scorpion,” this supergiant has a distinct reddish hue and is visible to the naked eye. If you have good skies, try to split this binary star with a medium-sized telescope. Antares is a double star with a white main-sequence companion that comes in at a 5.4 magnitude.
Messier 4: one of the easiest globular clusters to find, M4 is the closest of these star clusters to Earth at 5,500 light years. With a magnitude of about 5.6, you can spot this with a small or medium-sized telescope in average skies. Darker skies will reveal the bright core. Use Antares as a guide star for this short trip across the sky.
Caldwell 76: If you prefer open star clusters, locate C76, also known as the Baby Scorpion Cluster, right where the ‘stinger’ of Scorpius starts to curve. At a magnitude of 2.6, it is slightly brighter than M4, albeit smaller, and can be spotted with binoculars and the naked eye under good sky conditions.
Lastly, if you have an astrophotography set up, capture the Cat’s Paw Nebula near the stinger of Scorpius. You can also capture the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex in the nearby constellation Ophiuchus. Brilliant Antares can be found at the center of this wondrous structure.
While many cultures tell tales of a ‘scorpion’ in the sky, several Polynesian cultures see the same stars as the demigod Māui’s fishhook, Manaiakalani. It is said that Māui didn’t just use his hook for giant fish in the sea, but to pull new islands from the bottom of the ocean. There are many references to the Milky Way representing a fish. As Manaiakalani rises from the southeast, it appears to pull the great celestial fish across a glittering sea of stars.
While you can use smartphone apps or dedicated devices like a Sky Quality Meter, Scorpius is a great constellation to measure your sky darkness with! On a clear night, can you trail the curve of the tail? Can you see the scorpion’s heart? Use our free printable Dark Sky Wheel, featuring the stars of Scorpius on one side and Orion on the other for measurements during cooler months. You can find this resource and more in the Big Astronomy Toolkit.
A rogue mineral found in a dust grain from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, which was visited and sampled by the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission in 2020, could upend decades of perceived wisdom about the conditions in which some asteroids formed.
The mineral in question is named “djerfisherite” (pronounced juh-fisher-ite) after the American mineralogist Daniel Jerome Fisher, is an iron-nickel sulfide containing potassium. It is typically found on asteroids and in meteorites called “enstatite chondrites.” These are quite rare and formed in the inner solar system some 4.6 billion years ago, in temperatures exceeding 662 degrees Fahrenheit (350 degrees Celsius).
So, imagine the surprise of researchers, led by planetary scientist Masaaki Miyahara of Hiroshima University in Japan, when they found djerfisherite in a grain sampled from Ryugu — a carbon-rich CI chondrite that instead formed in cooler conditions in the outer solar system.
“Its occurrence is like finding a tropical seed in Arctic ice — indicating either an unexpected local environment or long-distance transport in the early solar system,” said Miyahara in a statement.
As a CI chondrite, Ryugu was thought to have experienced a very different history when compared to enstatite chondrites. Ryugu is believed to have once been part of a larger protoplanet, but was blasted off due to an impact at some point in the solar system’s history. Born in the outer solar system, that parent body would have been relatively abundant in water- and carbon dioxide-ice. Enough heat should have also been generated within the body through the radioactive decay of radioisotopes locked up in its rocks — that would’ve melted the ice. Taking place about 3 million years after the parent body formed, that resulting liquid would have chemically altered Ryugu’s composition. But importantly, temperatures from such radioisotopic heating are not expected to have exceeded 122 degrees F (50 degrees Celsius).
And yet, somehow, there is a grain of djerfisherite in Ryugu samples.
(Image credit: DARTS archive /Meli thev via Wikimedia Commons)
One possibility is the djerfisherite is not native to Ryugu, and is rather connected to the impact of an enstatite chondrite. The alternative is that the djerfisherite formed in situ on Ryugu — but this could only have occurred in potassium-bearing fluids and iron–nickel sulfides at temperatures greater than 662 degrees Fahrenheit.
Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!
Isotopic data could offer a decent idea as to the origin of the djerfisherite, but that data is currently lacking, so there’s no way to say for sure. However, based on their analysis, Miyahara’s team leans towards the likelihood that the djerfisherite somehow indeed formed in situ on Ryugu. How the conditions arose to make this possible remains, however? That’s a mystery for now.
“The discovery of djerfisherite in a Ryugu grain suggests that materials with very different formation histories may have mixed early in the solar system’s evolution, or that Ryugu experienced localized, chemically heterogeneous conditions not previously recognized,” said Miyahara. “This finding challenges the notion that Ryugu is compositionally uniform and opens new questions about the complexity of primitive asteroids.”
Scientists will now be rushing to re-analyze their samples from Ryugu to try and learn whether this discovery of djerfisherite is a one-off, or whether there is more evidence that supports its in-situ formation.
In doing so, scientists won’t just solve a mystery. They will also come to better understand where and how different minerals formed in the protoplanetary disk around the young sun 4.6 billion years ago, how those minerals subsequently mixed and coalesced to form asteroids and planets, and how subsequent chemical reactions on those bodies produced more minerals. In doing so, they can chart the chemical evolution of the solar system.
The discovery of djerfisherite was reported on May 28 in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
