This CV3 carbonaceous meteorite is an agglomeration of the most primitive material in our Solar System, various nodules that formed before the planets. It contains amino acids, lithium-rich protein of extraterrestrial origin, and pre-solar grains — dust from nearby stars, including novas, supernovas, and red giants!

The white nodules are calcium-aluminium-rich inclusions (CAI), measured to be 4.567 billion years old, the oldest known matter formed from our Solar System. This material is 30 million years older than the Earth and 193 million years older than the oldest rock known on Earth.

Carbonaceous chondrites are the most primitive meteorites and contain the most primitive known matter. They have undergone the least mixing and remelting since the early stages of Solar System formation. Because of this, their age is frequently taken as the "age of the Solar System."

The CAIs have very unusual isotopic compositions, with many being distinct from the Earth, Moon and other meteorites for a wide variety of isotopes. These "isotope anomalies" contain evidence for processes that occurred in other stars before the Solar System formed.

Numerous studies of the Allende CV3 revealed a small amount of carbon (including graphite and diamond), and many organic compounds, including amino acids, some not known on Earth. Detailed studies in 2020 have even identified iron and lithium-containing protein of extraterrestrial origin, first such discovery in meteorite!

The discovery at Cal Tech in 1977 of new forms of the elements calcium, barium and neodymium in the meteorite was believed to show that those elements came from some source outside the early clouds of gas and dust that formed the Solar System. This supports the theory that shockwaves from a supernova - the explosion of an aging star - may have triggered the formation of, or contributed to the formation of, the Solar System. As further evidence, the Caltech group said the meteorite contained Aluminum 26, a rare form of aluminum. This acts as a "clock" on the meteorite, dating the explosion of the supernova to within less than 2 million years before the Solar System was formed.

Four Calcium–aluminium-rich inclusions (CAIs) that have been dated using the Pb-Pb chronometer yield a weighted mean age of 4567.30 ± 0.16 Myr. As CAIs are the oldest dated solids, this age is commonly used to define the age of the Solar System, known as “CAI time-zero”.

CAIs consist of minerals that are among the first solids condensed from the cooling protoplanetary disk. They are thought to have formed as fine-grained condensates from a high temperature (>1300 K) gas that existed in the protoplanetary disk at early stages of Solar System formations.

A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chondrite" rel="noreferrer nofollow">chondrite</a> is a stony (non-metallic) meteorite that has not been modified, by either melting or differentiation of the parent body. They are formed when various types of dust and small grains in the early Solar System accreted to form primitive asteroids. Their study provides important clues for understanding the origin and age of the Solar System, the synthesis of organic compounds, the origin of life and the presence of water on Earth.

Chondrites were formed by the accretion of particles of dust and grit present in the primitive Solar System which gave rise to asteroids over 4.54 billion years ago. These asteroid parent bodies of chondrites are (or were) small to medium-sized asteroids that were never part of any body large enough to undergo melting and planetary differentiation. Dating using 206Pb/204Pb gives an estimated age of 4,566.6 ± 1.0 Ma, matching ages for other chronometers. Another indication of their age is the fact that the abundance of non-volatile elements in chondrites is similar to that found in the atmosphere of the Sun and other stars in our galaxy.

The net result of secondary thermal, aqueous, and shock processes is that only a few known chondrites preserve in pristine form the original dust, chondrules, and inclusions from which they formed. Chondrites can also be categorized according to their petrologic type, which is the degree to which they were thermally metamorphosed or aqueously altered. The chondrules in a chondrite that is assigned a "3" have not been altered.

Prominent among the components present in chondrites are the enigmatic chondrules, millimetre-sized spherical objects that originated as freely floating, molten or partially molten droplets in space; most chondrules are rich in the silicate minerals olivine and pyroxene.

Chondrites also contain refractory inclusions (including Ca-Al Inclusions), which are among the oldest objects to form in the solar system, particles rich in metallic Fe-Ni and sulfides, and isolated grains of silicate minerals. The remainder of chondrites consists of fine-grained (micron-sized or smaller) dust, which may either be present as the matrix of the rock or may form rims or mantles around individual chondrules and refractory inclusions. Embedded in this dust are pre-solar grains, which predate the formation of our solar system and originated elsewhere in the galaxy. The chondrules have distinct texture, composition and mineralogy, and their origin continues to be the object of some debate. The scientific community generally accepts that these spheres were formed by the action of a shock wave that passed through the Solar System, although there is little agreement as to the cause of this shock wave.

An article published in 2005 proposed that the gravitational instability of the gaseous disk that formed Jupiter generated a shock wave with a velocity of more than 10 km/s, which resulted in the formation of the chondrules.

Because chondrites accumulated from material that formed very early in the history of the solar system, and because chondritic asteroids did not melt, they have very primitive compositions. "Primitive," in this sense, means that the abundances of most chemical elements do not differ greatly from those that are measured by spectroscopic methods in the photosphere of the sun, which in turn should be well-representative of the entire solar system.

Although the exact process is not very well understood, highly refractory elements like Ca and Al became separated from less refractory elements like Mg and Si, and were not uniformly sampled by each asteroid. The parent bodies of many groups of carbonaceous chondrites contain over-sampled grains rich in refractory elements.

Carbonaceous chondrites make up less than 5% of the chondrites that fall on Earth. They are characterized by the presence of carbon compounds, including amino acids. They are thought to have been formed the farthest from the sun of any of the chondrites as they have the highest proportion of volatile compounds.

CV (Vigarano type) chondrites are characterized by mm-sized chondrules and abundant refractory inclusions set in a dark matrix that comprises about half the rock. CV chondrites are noted for spectacular refractory inclusions, some of which reach centimeter sizes, and they are the only group to contain a distinctive type of large, once-molten inclusions. Chemically, CV chondrites have the highest abundances of refractory lithophile elements of any chondrite group. The CV group includes the remarkable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allende_meteorite" rel="noreferrer nofollow">Allende</a> fall in Mexico in 1969, which became the best-studied meteorite in history.

My heart-shaped meteorite is <a href="https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?code=61401" rel="noreferrer nofollow">NWA 8722</a>: Morocco 2006 Carbonaceous chondrite (CV3). 13.5cm x 12.5cm x 1.4mm slice

The meteorite consists of ca. 40% diverse mm-sized chondrules, 8% refractory inclusions, 2% lithic inclusions/fragments of mm to cm-size, and 50% matrix. The lithic inclusion are of dark or CO chondrite-like texture. The matrix is light brown and somewhat weathered with no visible metal.

<a href="https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbullclass.php?sea=CV3" rel="noreferrer nofollow">CV</a> is distinguished by large (mm-sized) chondrules, many of which are surrounded by igneous rims, large refractory inclusions and abundant matrix (40 vol%). Olivines rich in Fe, Ca minerals and Al.