Ancient Stardust Were Seeds for the Earliest Solids in the Solar System

New research from Caltech reveals that ancient stardust grains from dying stars acted as seeds for the solar system's earliest solids. The grains—remnants of stars that died before our Sun was born—were found embedded in calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions, the very first minerals to condense in the solar system's hot early environment. These pre-solar dust particles provided nucleation points that allowed minerals to crystallize quickly, solving a decades-old problem in cosmochemistry. Like snowflakes forming around dust grains, the solar system's first solids appear to have depended on these ancient cosmic seeds.

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