NEW YORK TIMES: Small Worlds With Lava Oceans Might Have Given Us Meteorites

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“Chondrule formation is just a really thorny problem,” Dr. Jones said. “So anytime somebody comes up with something completely different it’s very welcome, because we don’t have the answer.”

There may be a way to test the hypothesis soon. Two space missions are aiming to return samples of near-Earth asteroids to our planet in the coming years — Japan’s Hayabusa2 is on its way home to Earth this year after collecting samples from the asteroid Ryugu, and NASA’s Osiris-Rex will attempt to collect samples at Bennu, another near-Earth body, in October, arriving back at Earth in 2023.

“Most people would be absolutely stunned if there weren’t any chondrules in those materials,” Dr. Jones said.