Article: Comet dust changes ideas about start of Solar System: Some grains retrieved from tail of Wild 2 predate Sun

SAN FRANCISCO - Comets, the lonely wanderers of the solar system that some scientists think seeded Earth with the ingredients for life, are proving to be far more complex than anyone thought, containing a "zoo" of materials, including some compounds that appear to predate the sun.

Speaking Thursday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, scientists reported that there was enough mixing in the early solar system to send material from the proto-sun out into deep space, where it could be picked up by comets.

That discovery could alter theories about how stars and the planets around them form from primordial dust and gas, according to the team of researchers.

The findings, to be ...

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