A meteorite that crashed into rural southeastern Australia in a fireball in 1969 contained the oldest material ever found on Earth, stardust that predated the formation of our solar system by billions of years, scientists said Monday.
The oldest of 40 tiny dust grains trapped inside the meteorite fragments retrieved around the town of Murchison in Victoria state dated from about 7 billion years ago, about 2.5 billion years before the sun, Earth and rest of our solar system formed, the researchers said.
In fact, all of the dust specks analyzed in the research came from before the solar system's formation — thus known as "presolar grains" — with 60 percent of them between 4.6 and 4.9 billion years old and the oldest 10 percent dating to more than 5.6 billion years ago.