4.6 billion year old space rock discovered in the Sahara it is the oldest meteorite ever found and is expected to shed light on the early solar system at a time when earth did not even exist.

The space rock Erg Chech 002 is expected to provide insights into what our early system looked like, and the revelations are already surprising scientists themselves.

A team of Australian researchers say their study calls into question the method’s accuracy by which experts estimate the age of meteorites, and some may not be as old as first thought.

This is because they discovered that EC 002 contained more of the radioactive isotope Aluminum-26 (26Al) than other ancient meteorites of a similar age.

This is important because it challenges the theory that 26AIwhich is thought to provide a source of heat for the building blocks of the planets, was evenly distributed throughout the early solar system.

Experts estimate the age of meteorites based on the amount of AI 26 present in them when they formed.

But if the isotope was distributed unevenly throughout the early solar system, as the new study suggests, then measuring it can’t be relied on to estimate the age of space rocks or what role it might have played in planet formation.

This contrasts with previous research that argued that 26AI was evenly distributed until the formation of Earth-like planets.

We know that our solar system was formed before from about 4.5 billion years ago from a collapsing cloud of interstellar gas and dust that was probably part of a much larger nebula.

Scientists believe that its collapse may have been caused by shock wave of a nearby supernova or an exploding star, which in turn led to the creation of a solar nebula, a rotating disk from which the solar system originated.

26AI was then crucial in the process of transforming the earth into its present form because it provides enough heat through radioactive decay to produce planetary bodies with layered interiors like ours.