Every Snowflake Needs a Speck of Dust and So Do Planets

The early Solar System posed a puzzle for cosmochemists: how do solid grains condense from a uniform gas when the process is slow and difficult? Caltech researchers analyzing fragments of a meteorite that fell over Mexico in nineteen sixty-nine may have found the answer, according to Universe Today. They discovered specks of stardust from a star that existed before the Sun, buried inside some of the oldest material we possess. The finding suggests these ancient grains served as the seeds around which the first planets crystallized—much like snowflakes, which cannot form without a speck of dust.

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