The Stardust spacecraft collected thousands of particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 and returned them to Earth for laboratory study. The preliminary examination of these samples shows that the nonvolatile portion of the comet is an unequilibrated assortment of materials that have both presolar and solar system origin. The comet contains an abundance of silicate grains that are much larger than predictions of interstellar grain models, and many of these are high-temperature minerals that appear to have formed in the inner regions of the solar nebula. Their presence in a comet proves that the formation of the solar system included mixing on the grandest scales.
Type
research article
Web of Science ID
WOS:000242833600041
Author(s)
Brownlee, Don
Tsou, Peter
Aleon, Jerome
Alexander, Conel M. O'D.
Araki, Tohru
Bajt, Sasa
Baratta, Giuseppe A.
Bastien, Ron
Bland, Phil
Bleuet, Pierre
Date Issued
2006
Published in
Volume
314
Start page
1711
End page
1716
Editorial or Peer reviewed
REVIEWED
Written at
OTHER
Available on Infoscience
September 29, 2011
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