It’s a number that’s almost impossible to imagine.
4,500,000,000 years.
That’s roughly the age of our solar system — and the age of many meteorites that fall to Earth.
To put that into perspective, modern humans have existed for about 300,000 years. The pyramids of Egypt were built around 4,500 years ago. Recorded history only stretches back a few thousand years.
Meteorites were already ancient long before any of that happened.
Most meteorites formed during the earliest days of our solar system, when clouds of dust and metal collided and fused together around the young Sun. These fragments became part of asteroids and small planetary bodies orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.
Over billions of years, collisions between these bodies occasionally send fragments flying through space. Some of those fragments eventually cross Earth’s orbit and fall through our atmosphere.
When they land, they bring with them a record of the early solar system — material that formed long before Earth finished forming as a planet.
Holding a meteorite means holding something that has existed since the very beginning of our cosmic neighbourhood.
It’s one of the few ways we can physically touch something that old.