Pea-size minerals inside a meteorite are the oldest known material in the solar system.At 4,568.2 million years old, the minerals push back the birth of the solar system by as much as two million yearsand an exploding star injected key materials into our system as it was being born.
The 3-pound (1.5-kilogram) parent meteorite, dubbed NWA 2364, was found in 2004 in Morocco and is believed to have originated from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The tests reveal that telltale mineral lumps inside—called calcium-aluminum inclusions—are from a time before that asteroid belt existed. The minerals may have formed just after part of an interstellar gas and dust cloud, or nebula, had collapsed and formed our sun."This revised age is between 0.3 and 1.9 million years older than previous estimates,""making it the oldest on record."
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