Using Mineral Science to Elucidate Mysteries of the Early Solar System

Abstract

 Chondritic-porous interplanetary dust particles (CP IDPs) originating from comet and carbonaceous chondrites of asteroids are primitive materials in the solar system. This paper reviews our recent research by mineralogical approach on the primitive materials, which include reproduction experiments of glass with embedded metal and sulfide (GEMS) in CP IDPs, detailed three-dimensional structures of GEMS, and discoveries of ultra-porous lithology as a “fossil of ice” in primitive carbonaceous chondrites and CO₂-rich fluid inclusions in calcites of an aqueously-altered carbonaceous chondrite based on multi-scale three-dimensional observations. From the results, together with recent dynamic models of solar system formation, a new united model of the formation and evolution of primitive materials in the solar system is proposed as a working hypothesis. In this model, GEMS or GEMS-like materials corresponding to matrices of carbonaceous chondrites form due to the evaporation of precursors followed by condensation and chondrules due to melting followed by solidification in the highest temperature and moderately-high temperature regions, respectively, through a single local heating event. These local events occur at different distances from the sun and the high-temperature products were aggregated into comets and parent bodies of carbonaceous chondrites with ice and organic materials.