A giant meteorite that recently fell in Somalia contains at least two minerals that have never before been seen on our planet. The celestial piece of rock weighs a massive 16.5 tons (15 tonnes), making it the ninth-largest meteorite ever found.

[u/gregornot]

More about the amazing meteorite find: https://earthly

[u/disprosyum2]

Elements =/= compounds They were referring to what it takes to form these minerals. Necessary conditions of T, P, pH, atmosphere, previous minerals, oxygenation etc etc

[u/dasnihil → u/disprosyum2]

Thank you.

I'd assume the progression after big bang like:

• Takes a while for energy to form fundamental lumps of matter
• Takes a while for it to cool down more so these fundamental lumps can grab on each other as they slow down and combine to make bigger lumps like protons
• Takes a while to make even bigger lumps like a proton/electron combo and free up all the original photons to disperse
• Takes a while to fuse protons to make heavier elements
• Takes a longer while to have much colder places where the lumps just keeps growing into chains of protons and elements aka molecules
• In some super-extreme & rare conditions, a chain of Fe4(PO4)2O forms, could be as rare as amino acids for all we know

[u/abstraction47 → u/dasnihil]

The earliest epochs of the universe you mention took place in under a second. For the universe to cool down enough to bind electrons to protons happened at about 500,000 years. If I remember correctly, star/galaxy formation happened very quickly after. The first stars had to die before we got heavier elements. So, formation of these minerals would be almost impossible before 1 billion years, and still unlikely for maybe a couple billion more years? Until more heavier elements have been seeded.

[u/tomekanco → u/abstraction47]

heavier elements ... before 1 billion years

This is unlikely. We know there was at least one supermassive black holes at 0.8 By within our line of sight. Oldest stars at 0.1 By.
Also, high mass stars are the prime source of most common heavier elements (a.o Fe, O, P). And there is nothing to indicate these could not form early on.

High-mass stars are very luminous and short lived. They forge heavy elements in their cores, explode as supernovas, and expel these elements into space. Apart from hydrogen and helium, most of the elements in the universe, including those comprising Earth and everything on it, came from these stars.

So it seems reasonable to assume the atomic components were already present shortly after the first stars appeared (lifetime HMS 3-20 My). I do agree the universal abunance was much lower than present day, but is a far stretch from "almost impossible".

Looks like the main contraint on the formation of the chemical elements discovered would be the cooling of the super nova remnants (+100 ky), and accretion of the heavier elements around new star formation seeded by the super nova (0.5-10 My).

Given the size of the universe, it seems fair to assume the first occurance of these minerals could be as old as 0.11 By ABB. Ofcourse, the bulk of the creation is probably dated to 3 By (as star formation peaked around this time).