Donald Brownlee Formed Quotations

We're approaching the end of a fantastic voyage. This is the farthest anything from Earth has traveled and come back. Soon we'll be able to examine the building blocks that formed the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.

If it was formed in our solar system, then it had to be transported from the hottest regions to the coolest.

Last Sunday, after seven years in space traveling nearly three billion miles, Stardust landed in the Great Salt Lake Desert with a treasure from when the solar system formed 4.6 billion years ago. We should have more than one million particles larger than one micron in diameter.

Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice. We've found samples from the coldest part of the solar system that have mineral grains formed under extremely high temperatures.

We can tell the difference, absolutely, for something that formed in our own solar system, and something that formed around another star.

It's certain such materials never formed inside this icy, cold body.

Its cargo was an ancient, cosmic treasure from the very edge of the solar system ? a treasure that formed when the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

In the coldest part of the solar system, we've found samples that have formed at extremely high temperatures. When these minerals formed, they were either red-hot or white-hot grains.