Erg Chech 002

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About Erg Chech 002

What it is? These are the rocks containing distinctive greenish crystals, it turned out to be from outer space, left over from the dawn of the Solar System.
They were all pieces of a meteorite known as Erg Chech 002, which is the oldest volcanic rock ever found.
It is known as an “ungrouped achondrite” means their parent bodies and family relationships are unknown.
Achondrites are rocks formed from melted planetesimals, which is what we call solid lumps in the cloud of gas and debris that formed the Solar System.
Erg Chech 002 contains a high abundance of lead-206 and lead-207, as well as relatively large amounts of undecayed uranium-238 and uranium-235.
Aluminium-26 was distributed quite unevenly throughout the cloud of dust and gas which formed the solar system.

Key facts about Erg Chech

It is a sandy region of the Sahara in western Algeria and northern Mali.
It consists largely of shifting dunes.

Q1) What is Uranium-238?

Uranium-238 (U-238) is a radioactive isotope of uranium, a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is one of the two primary isotopes of uranium found in nature, the other being uranium-235 (U-235).

Source: Sahara space rock, 4.5 billion years old, upends assumptions about the early Solar System.