[MUSIC] This is a large piece of

the Allende meteorite, one of the most famous meteorites of all. It fell in Mexi
co in 1969. An estimated 300 tons entered
the atmosphere above Mexico and created a brilliant fireball that was
visible in the southern US, Mexico, and Central America. Fragments of the meteor
ite
fell over a large area in the province known as Allende. And the area was about
80
kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide. And in total, two and
a half tons was recovered. 1969 was also the year when
the US landed on the moon. All the labs were ready but
they had nothing to analyse because the lunar samples
had not been brought back yet. So when the Allende meteorite landed, it was stud
ied in all these
state of the art laboratories. And even today, more than 50 years later,
we have more than 100 papers a year based on new discoveries made
in this meteorite, it's very important. When you look at it you can see that
it has a fusion crust dating back to the time when this particular fragment
was slowed down from supersonic speeds in the atmosphere above Mexico. Just one
millimeter below in the surface
we have undisturbed material dating back to the birth of the solar system. All o
f the particles
below the surface here can tell their own story about when and
how the solar system formed. The big, white thing you see here is a calcium-alum
inum-rich inclusion
that I've discussed in the course. We've dated an inclusion just like this
one in a laboratory below my feet here, in this building, and it turned out
to be 4,567.3 million years, and that is now the age accepted
as the age of the solar system. So, is it important whether the solar
system is 4,567.3 or 0.8 or 0.9? Not really. The interesting thing is that we
can take this thing apart, and we can date each particle, and
we can put them in chronological order and follow how the solar system evolved,
from its earliest phases and up to the time where
planets began to form. We can read the whole story in this rock
if we can understand the language it's written in. That's what we call geology.
So if you understand geology, you can read the story of why we're
here today in this very rock. >> [MUSIC]