Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites experienced fluid flow within the past million years

Abstract

Carbonaceous chondritic meteorites are primordial Solar System materials and a source of water delivery to Earth. Fluid flow on the parent bodies of these meteorites is known to have occurred very early in Solar System history (first 6+ moved within the past few 100,000 years. In some meteorites, this time scale is less than the cosmic-ray exposure age, which measures when they were ejected from their parent body into space. Fluid flow occurred after melting of ice, potentially by impact heating, solar heating, or atmospheric ablation. We favor the impact heating hypothesis, which implies that the parent bodies still contain ice.