Dartboard or Doughnut? Iron Meteorites Reveal Shape of Our Infant Solar System

The formation of our solar system involved the accretion of gas and dust into a protoplanetary disk, with meteorites providing key insights into its early composition. The discovery of refractory metals in outer disk meteorites contradicts previous models, indicating a more complex disk structure influenced by Jupiter’s gravity, which helped trap these metals. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

Fragments from the early cosmos help unravel the mystery of our solar system’s birth.
Iron meteorites are remnants of the metallic cores of the earliest asteroids in our solar system. Iron meteorites contain refractory metals, such as iridium and platinum, that formed near the sun but were transported to the outer solar system.
New research shows that for this to have happened, the protoplanetary disk of our solar system had to have been doughnut-shaped because the refractory metals could not have crossed the large gaps in a target-shaped disk of concentric rings.
The paper suggests that the refractory metals moved outward as the protoplanetary disk rapidly expanded, and were trapped in the outer solar system by Jupiter.