When analyzing the most accurate laboratory measurements of the magnetic fields anchored in the grains of a primitive meteorite, scientists discovered important clues about how our early solar system evolved and how our  planets formed. New measurements have revealed shockwaves traveling through the clouds of dust ridden gas surrounding the newborn sun and have been attributed as major factors in the formation of the solar system.

The data from the analysis first appeared in a paper published on November 13 in the Science Journal, by lead author and graduate student Roger Fu of MIT. Fu had been working under Benjamin Weiss and Steve Desch of Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, as co-authors to the paper.

“The measurements made by Fu and Weiss are astounding and unprecedented,” says Desch. “Not only have they measured tiny magnetic fields thousands of times weaker than a compass feels, they have mapped the magnetic fields’ variation recorded by the meteorite, millimeter by millimeter.”

The ASU scientists admit, given our solar system formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago determining how our solar system formed may be impossible, but scientists agree what ever the process was, it must have been messy and left clues for analysis. Crater impacts, debris, and moons have all been attributed as clues to how our solar system may have formed.

The most useful pieces of debris are the oldest, most primitive and least altered typed of meteorites, called chondrites by scientists. Chondrite meteorites are literally pieces of asteroids broken apart by collisions with other asteroids, that have remained relatively unmodified since they formed near the birth of the solar system. They are constructed by mostly slivers of small stone grains, dubbed chondrules, only a millimeter in diameter.

“The new experiments,” Desch says, “probe magnetic minerals in chondrules never measured before. They also show that each chondrule is magnetized like a little bar magnet, but with ‘north’ pointing in random directions.”