Jupiter's orbital ring forged six distinct meteorite types, simulations reveal

Four and a half billion years ago, a ring of compressed dust just beyond Jupiter's orbit became an unlikely forge — producing, over the span of two million years, the raw material for six distinct families of ancient space rocks. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research have now connected computer simulations of this process to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites held in laboratories on Earth, offering the first empirical validation of how dust traps shaped the architecture of the early solar system. In doing so, they suggest that such traps were not rare accidents of co