4.6-Billion-Year-Old Chunk of an Ancient Baby Planet Found in Africa

The findings, according to the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that it could have once been part of the crust of an object known as a protoplanet, which is a large, rocky body that was about to become a planet.

All these facts make ec 002 extremely unusual as it is a very rare piece of survival from a lost baby planet. This planet, part of a world long lost, was probably destroyed or absorbed by bigger planets during the formation of our solar system. 

It's a mystery in the rock.

The exhibits were originally found in Adrar, Algeria, in May 2020 and they were soon identified as unusual because it was clearly formed by a volcano, This is strange considering that most rock meteorites come from basalt crusted springs, which is quickly cooled washes which is high in iron and magnesium. On the other hand, the chemical composition of this one was high in silica and showed that it emerged from a reservoir of magma partially melted in the crust of the parent body. 

'This meteorite is the oldest magmatic rock analysed to date and sheds light on the formation of the primordial scabs that covered the oldest protoplanets,' wrote the study. 

When scientists compared EC 002 with wave-length models of spectral "imprints" of distant cosmic objects, they found that the unusual meteorite was "distinctly distinct from all groups of asteroids." out of 10,000 objects in the sloan digital sky survey database, Neither was similar to EC 002. The researchers wrote that no objects with spectral features similar to those of ec 002 have been identified so far."

The researchers will be further analyzing this oldest magmatic rock ever identified, and while it births many mysteries, it is also bound to shed new light on the history of our solar system and expand our horizons.