{"id":244224,"date":"2026-09-19T01:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T06:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/from-the-start-the-solar-system-chose-fire-over-ice-to-build-its-first-bodies"},"modified":"2026-09-19T01:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T06:04:11","slug":"from-the-start-the-solar-system-chose-fire-over-ice-to-build-its-first-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/from-the-start-the-solar-system-chose-fire-over-ice-to-build-its-first-bodies","title":{"rendered":"From the start, the solar system chose fire over ice to build its first bodies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/from-the-start-the-solar-system-chose-fire-over-ice-to-build-its-first-bodies.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When the solar system first took up the task of building solid bodies\u2014such as planets, moons and protoplanets\u2014it basically had a choice between two ingredients: heat-forged chondrules, which were millimeter-sized bits of rock, and matrix, a fine-grained, cold dust loaded with water ice and organic molecules. And from the get-go, the solar system chose fire.<\/p>\n<p>In a new Yale-led study, researchers provide the first geochemical evidence that within the first million years after the solar system began to form, it was already preferentially sorting for chondrules over matrix. Prior research had only been able to document this sorting process in objects that formed 2\u20134 million years after the solar system\u2019s origin.<\/p>\n<p>The study is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41550-026-02976-6\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Nature Astronomy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the solar system first took up the task of building solid bodies\u2014such as planets, moons and protoplanets\u2014it basically had a choice between two ingredients: heat-forged chondrules, which were millimeter-sized bits of rock, and matrix, a fine-grained, cold dust loaded with water ice and organic molecules. And from the get-go, the solar system chose fire. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}