Planetary Materials Research Group

Planetary Materials are those pieces of condensed matter that were leftover from the time that our solar system formed over 4.5 billion years ago. Such materials include interplanetary dust particles, pre-solar grains, primitive meteorites and soils from the Moon and asteroids. The Planetary Materials Research Group studies the constituent minerals within such samples at scales ranging from micrometers down to the atomic. We use information on crystal structure and chemistry to understand the conditions under which such minerals formed.