Explosive collisions of giant, radioactive magma balls may have made the planets (Illustration: sgeier)
ASTEROID-SIZED balls of magma hurtled through our infant solar system, and spray from their many collisions provided much of the raw material that formed Earth and its rocky siblings. That’s according to a new take on an old theory that challenges the notion that the solar system started out as a placid sea of dust motes which simply clumped together to form planets.
The early family tree of our solar system’s rocky planets features tiny glassy spheres called chondrules, found today inside ancient meteorites. The…
