Comets, asteroids, and meteorites are leftover artifacts from the earliest days of our Solar System, and can help astrobiologists answer questions about its origin and evolution. A new study, supported in part by the NAI, is helping solve an important question about icy comets like Wild 2 (which was visited by the Stardust spacecraft in 2004). Although comets come from the cold regions of the outer Solar System, some contain particles that formed under high temperatures.

Astrobiologists at the Carnegie Institution and Tel Aviv University have created a model that shows the early solar nebula could have experienced powerful outbursts that tossed particles great distances – far out of the hot, inner region of the disk.

Studying how the Solar System formed and evolved is important for astrobiologists because, so far, our system is the only one we know of that hosts an inhabited planet – the Earth. The new study was published under lead author Alan Boss in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.