RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A new study published in Science magazine points out that human beings may have existed in the universe even before the formation of the solar system. Formed 4.5 billion years ago, the system housing the Earth is basically an adolescent when compared to the universe, which scientists believe has existed for 13.8 billion years.
And, according to scientists, the human species may have been walking the Earth 100,000 years before the creation of the solar system – which would have taken 200,000 years to be completed.
This research is certainly mind-blowing. According to researchers, the formation of the solar system took longer than the formation of human beings – in a debate between who came first, the egg or the chicken, in this case it was certainly the chicken.
“If we take this in comparison to human life, the formation of the solar system would be comparable to a 12-hour pregnancy rather than a nine month one. It’s a fairly rapid process,” said Gregory A. Brennecka, author of the study.
To reach this conclusion, Brennecka and his team analyzed different parts of ancient meteorites. The oldest solids in the solar system are the calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (or CAIs), and their samples suggest a different time for forming our system.
“These small meteorite inclusions formed in a high temperature environment were probably near the young Sun. They were then transported to the region where there were carbon-condite meteorites and formed what we know today,” the scientists explain in a statement.
According to them, the majority of the CAIs were formed 4.56 billion years ago, over a period that may have ranged from 40 to 200,000 years.
The study considerably reduces the time that other astronomers expected the Solar System to have taken to be formed – from one to two million years. “This research shows that the collapse that led to the creation of the system occurred very quickly,” says Brennecka.
Source: Exame