Solar System Forensics

Carl Sagan famously said, “We are made of starstuff”. Well, of course so is the rest of the material in the Solar System…but is it all made from the same starstuff? When and where did this starstuff come from? Meteorites provide clues to these types of questions and through forensic investigation of starstuff “fingerprints” found in meteorites, we can learn an incredible amount about the creation and evolution of the Solar System. This talk will start with the basics of meteorites, move on to some of what we have learned (and hope to learn) from them, and touch on how drastically meteorites have altered the course of Earth history.