Scientists from Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that calls into question the established model of the Solar System's formation. The key piece of evidence was the meteorite DOM 08006, found in Antarctica in 2008. Unlike the vast majority of space rocks, over 4.5 billion years it did not undergo a cycle of asteroid destruction, migration through the Asteroid Belt, and reprocessing. This allowed researchers to access material that has been preserved in a near-pristine state since the birth of the protoplanetary disk.
Calcium-Aluminum Inclusions: A Time Capsule of the First 200,000 Years
Inside the DOM 08006 rock, calcium-aluminum inclusions (CAIs) were discovered — microscopic fragments of dust that formed in the first 200,000 years of the Solar System's existence, when the Sun itself was only beginning to take shape from a condensing cloud of gas. According to MIT professor Benjamin Weiss, most meteorites over billions of years undergo a complex journey: they form in a nebula, become part of asteroids, are destroyed, migrate, and only then fall to Earth. DOM 08006 escaped these destructive processes, preserving the oldest markers that would have been irretrievably lost in other samples.
Magnetism Before the Star: A New Force in the Sun's Formation
About 4.6 billion years ago, the Solar System was a spherical cloud of gas and dust. As it contracted, charged particles formed a plasma that generated a powerful magnetic field even before the star itself appeared. Scientists concluded that it was precisely this magnetism, working in tandem with gravity, that helped move matter from the protoplanetary disk inward — toward the young Sun. Until now, the existence of magnetic fields had been proven only for later stages — roughly 2 million years after formation began, when the Sun and the primary planets already existed. The new data shift this boundary an order of magnitude earlier, recording magnetic activity in the very embryonic period.
The End of the Debate: Gravity Alone Was Not Enough
The study's lead author, Kauee Borlina of Purdue University, emphasizes that the transition from a spherical cloud to a flat disk is one of the most important events in the history of the Solar System, and previous models relying solely on gravity could not fully explain it. The new data prove that without accounting for magnetic fields, it is now impossible to create an accurate model of the origin of the Sun and the terrestrial planets. The heated debates in the scientific community over whether magnetism actually acted at the very first stage, when only a dusty disk existed, are effectively settled.
Contradictory Data
In public coverage of the study, the emphases diverge. The Ukrainian outlet RBC-Ukraine and a number of international media outlets focus on the role of magnetic fields and calcium-aluminum inclusions as the central result of the work. At the same time, the Russian outlet Pravda.Ru, in its headline and lead, draws attention to a "rare mineral" and the meteorite's "ammonium" composition, which may give the reader the impression that the article is about a different object or mechanism. In substance, both descriptions most likely refer to the same meteorite, DOM 08006, but they capture different mineralogical aspects of its composition. The numerical parameters (200,000 years for the CAIs, 2 million years for the previously known magnetic fields, 4.6 billion years for the age of the system) match across all verified sources, and no discrepancies in the dates were found.
