Eventually, the heavier materials settled at the core while lighter silicates formed the outer mantles and crust.
Dr Vaccaro said: “When this happens, all the starting material that we had in the protoplanetary disk is gone as it went through the process of melting and recrystallisation, which limits what we can learn by studying the rocks of Earth.
“This means that if we want to understand what the dust was like as the solar system formed, we need to go back and grab some of the material that didn’t go through this differentiation process.
“In some meteorites, such as Acfer 094, we have that starting material preserved.”
Missions’ like Japan’s Hayabusa2 will collect samples of space rock for return to Earth.
But the fossil ice discovery has already allowed the researchers to build a model of how the asteroid grew and how the early planets took shape.
