title: What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System
author: James Dinneen
contenttype: article
publication: Quanta Magazine
published: 2026-03-02T15:12:31+00:00
sourceurl: https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-crystals-older-than-the-sun-reveal-about-the-start-of-the-solar-system-20260302/
word_count: 73
The standard story of the origin of our solar system has gone like this: 4.6 billion years ago, a giant cloud of dust hung frozen in space. Then the explosion of a nearby star caused part of that dust cloud to collapse. Pulled by gravity toward a central point, the dust coalesced into a radiating ball of hydrogen and helium about 1.4 million kilometers in diameter — what would become our sun. Source