![A cut section of the Leoville carbonaceous chondrite meteorite. Its pebbly composition is thought …[Credits : F. Wlotzka, Max-Planck-Institut fur Chemie, Mainz, Ger.]](http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/96/60196-004-5C2E1BF1.jpg)
A cut section of the Leoville carbonaceous chondrite meteorite. Its pebbly composition is thought to provide a direct look at the dust grains and fragments from which it and countless other such objects accreted during the birth of the solar system about 4.56 billion years ago. These small bodies, in turn, collected into asteroid-size planetesimals, the building blocks of the planets.
Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.
If you think a reference to this article on "" will enhance your Web site,
blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article,
and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.
You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.
We welcome your comments. Any revisions or updates suggested for this article will be reviewed by our editorial staff. Contact us here.
Regular users of Britannica may notice that this comments feature is less robust than in the past. This is only temporary, while we make the transition to a dramatically new and richer site. The functionality of the system will be restored soon.