Research & Projects

Aurora in Göttigen, 2026.01.19

My research investigates the energetic environment of the young Sun and its interaction with the protoplanetary disk. Primitive meteorites preserve refractory minerals that formed during the earliest stages of Solar System evolution. By measuring cosmogenic noble gas isotopes such as helium and neon together with isotopic systems including O, Al–Mg, and Ca–Ti, I quantify the intensity of solar energetic particles in the early Solar System. These records provide insights into the evolution of solar activity and the irradiation processes that affected the formation of the earliest planetary materials.

Refractory minerals such as hibonite, corundum, and spinel represent some of the first solids to condense in the solar nebula. My work uses isotopic and chemical analyses of these minerals to trace the formation conditions and transport processes in the protoplanetary disk. These studies help constrain fundamental processes such as condensation, evaporation, and mass transport during the earliest stages of Solar System formation.

Primitive meteorites preserve records of geological processes that occurred on their parent asteroids. In a study of the CM chondrite Aguas Zarcas, we discovered compact fragments composed of deformed chondrules that record an unusual geological process on an asteroid surface. High-resolution imaging and physical modeling show that these fragments formed when surface materials were deformed by impacts, broken apart by thermal cycling, and later reassembled into the surrounding undeformed host rock. This process closely resembles the particle-ejection activity observed on asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, where swarms of small pebbles are released from the asteroid’s surface. Our work provides the first physical evidence of this geological process preserved in a meteorite sample on Earth. These findings suggest that many asteroids are probably not 'dead' but have weak activity.