Ryugu Paleomagnetism

The nebula that formed after the creation of the Sun was an exciting and chaotic place, filled with growing planets and cataclismic disruptsions. A key feature of the nebula was a magnetic field coupled to the gas, and this field may have played a key role in transporting angular momentum and mass across the protoplanetary disk. While the strength of the magnetic field in the inner solar system ( < 7 astronomical units [AU]) has been measured, the intensity of the field in the distal regions of the nebula are unknown. We measured the magnetic record of samples (bottom left) returned from asteroid Ryugu (top left) from the Hayabusa2 mission to see if they retain an imprint from the the distal nebular field. The samples are though to have been from a body that formed at distances > 7 AU, and possibly as far as 25 AU. Combined with a re-analysis of the ages and paleointensities of other distally-forming meteorites, we find evidence that there existed a magnetic field in the far reaches of the solar system strong enough to drive the transport of mass and momentum. The results of this study are reported in Mansbach et al 2024.