Abstract
METEORITES which fall to Earth's surface generally carry permanent magnetisation which probably was acquired early in their history1. In particular, carbonaceous chondrites, which are generally assumed to be virtually unaltered relicts from the earliest Solar System processes of condensation and accretion2, have apparently been magnetised in magnetic fields with intensities in the range 0.1–10 G (refs 1, 3, 4). The origin of the magnetising field has remained obscure; explanations proposed to account for the field, include a strong central solar field in the early Sun, an intense solar wind magnetic field, magnetic fields generated in large parent objects—ancestral to the meteorites—and the interstellar magnetic field transiently compressed during the Solar System's formation. So far as we know, none of these mechanisms has been shown quantitatively capable of accounting for measured meteoritic remanence5. We suggest here that the magnetic field recorded in the remanence of carbonaceous chondrites may have been produced by a self-excited hydro-magnetic dynamo in the gaseous preplanetary nebula from which the Solar System is thought to have formed.
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LEVY, E. Magnetic field in the primitive solar nebula. Nature 276, 481 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1038/276481a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/276481a0
