Präsolare Körner sind winzige feste Mineralien, die im Gas alter Sterne kristallisierten. Diese Kristalle sind das älteste Material, mit dem jemals der Mensch umgegangen ist. Die präsolaren Körner des Murchison-Meteoriten gehörten zu einer Gruppe massereicher Sterne, die Hunderte Millionen Jahre vor der Geburt der Sonne untergingen.

SS:

*At the dawn of the space age, presolar grains were unheard-of, even as a hypothetical. But hints of their existence started emerging in the 1960s during laboratory experiments on ancient meteorites. The space rocks contained weird isoptic radios of the noble gasses neon and xenon that could not be explained by contemporaneous models of solar system formation.*

*These findings prompted scientists, including John Reynolds and Donald Clayton, to propose* [*the existence*](https://open.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1340&context=physastro_pubs) *of presolar grains. The prediction was eventually confirmed experimentally by the chemist Edward Anders in the 1980s using an ion probe that could resolve the isotopic composition of the grains in unprecedented detail.*

*“They discovered that it’s not just the noble gasses, but that all the elements were just isotopically wacky,” explained Nittler, who said he felt lucky to be on the “ground floor” of the field as he began his graduate research in the 1990s. “It was the doggedness of Ed Anders to try and do this, combined with technical maturity. This whole field has continuously grown along with advances in technology. They couldn’t have been found sooner because we didn’t have the technology to analyze them.”*