Ancient meteorites reveal a powerful force that helped build the Solar System

About 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system began as an enormous cloud of gas and dust. Over the next several million years, this "solar nebula" changed dramatically. The cloud collapsed and flattened into a disk, eventually giving rise to the sun at its center and the planets that formed around it.

Gravity has long been considered the main force behind this transformation. New research from MIT, however, suggests that magnetism may also have been an important part of the process.

Scientists found evidence of ancient magnetic fields preserved in some of the oldest meteorite material ever identified. The researchers studied microscopic grains inside a meteorite discovered in Antarctica in 2008. Known as calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions, or CAIs, these grains formed during the solar system's first 200,000 years and represent the oldest known material from that period.