A new look at the family tree

So, now we have this lovely meteorite called Winchcombe (unofficial name for the moment). And everyone has been asking what sort of new and amazing stuff will we learn from it? The answer of course is loads – it’s packed full of exciting information about the earliest days of our Solar System. All we have…

Jupiter – not to blame after all?

It is now generally accepted that, from a geochemical perspective, our Solar System is lumpy. In fact it comes in two very distinct lumps. This was pointed out by Paul Warren in his 2011 paper. He showed that when various isotopes (e.g. 54Cr, 62Ni, 50Ti), measured in a wide range of extraterrestrial materials, are plotted…

A big splash! – water and the giant impact

It is now widely accepted that the Moon formed as the result of a collision between two planet-sized objects. An event generally referred to as the giant impact. But that’s more or less where the consensus ends. There is currently little agreement on the relative size of the colliding bodies or the energy of the…