Chondrites

Chondrite
— Type —
A specimen of the NWA 869 chondrite (type L4-6), showing chondrules and metal flakes
Compositional type	Stony
Parent body	Small to medium asteroids that were never part of a body large enough to undergo melting and planetary differentiation.
Petrologic type	3–6
Total known specimens	Over 27,000

Chondrites are stony (non-metallic) meteorites that have not been modified due to melting or differentiation of the parent body. They are formed when various types of dust and small grains that were present in the early solar system accreted to form primitive asteroids. They are the most common type of meteorite that falls to Earth with estimates for the proportion of the total fall that they represent varying between 85.7% and 86.2%. Their study provides important clues for understanding the origin and age of the Solar System, the synthesis of organic compounds, the origin of life or the presence of water on Earth. One of their characteristics is the presence of chondrules, which are round grains formed by distinct minerals, that normally constitute between 20% and 80% of a chondrite by volume.

Chondrites can be differentiated from iron meteorites due to their low iron and nickel content. Other non-metallic meteorites, achondrites, which lack chondrules, were formed more recently.

There are currently over 27,000 chondrites in the world's collections. The largest individual stone ever recovered, weighing 1770 kg, was part of the Jilin meteorite shower of 1976. Chondrite falls range from single stones to extraordinary showers consisting of thousands of individual stones, as occurred in the Holbrook fall of 1912, where an estimated 14,000 stones rained down on northern Arizona.

Chondrites were formed by the accretion of particles of dust and grit present in the primitive Solar System which gave rise to asteroids over 4.55 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. Although chondritic asteroids never became hot enough to melt based upon internal temperatures, many of them reached high enough temperatures that they experienced significant thermal metamorphism in their interiors. The source of the heat was most likely energy coming from the decay of short-lived radioisotopes (half-lives less than a few million years) that were present in the newly formed solar system, especially ²⁶Al and ⁶⁰Fe, although heating may have been caused by impacts onto the asteroids as well. Many chondritic asteroids also contained significant amounts of water, possibly due to the accretion of ice along with rocky material. As a result, many chondrites contain hydrous minerals, such as clays, that formed when the water interacted with the rock on the asteroid in a process known as aqueous alteration. In addition, all chondritic asteroids were affected by impact and shock processes due to collisions with other asteroids. These events caused a variety of effects, ranging from simple compaction to brecciation, veining, localized melting, and formation of high-pressure minerals. The net result of these 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.