Carbon in primitive meteorites

Abstract

No meteorites are truly primitive, in the sense of being pristine collections of interstellar grains or solar-nebular condensates. Nonetheless, some chrondritic meteorites have been so little altered by secondary processing that they are commonly termed primitive and it is almost a definition of such chondrites that they contain significant quantities of carbon. Most of that carbon is of apparently local, i.e., solar-system, origin but a proportion that ranges from trace, in some cases, to minor, in others, is believed to be exotic, i.e., of circumstellar or interstellar origin, and it is upon such material that researchers focus here. The nature of the meteoritic samples and the techniques used to analyse them are briefly discussed and the observational record is surveyed. Clearly, the study of exotic carbon preserved in meteorites has been informative about sites of nucleosynthesis, processes of nucleation and growth of grains in stellar outflows, grain survival in the interstellar medium, and many other topics of astrophysical significance. Much more work, particularly of an interdisciplinary nature remains to be done, however.