Inside an ancient meteorite, NZ and American researchers have found stardust (mineral particles made by stars) that formed long before the birth of our Sun. They say that this challenges the assumption that everything was vaporised by the extreme heat when our Sun was born. Instead, they suggest that the stardust acted as an anchor for the first minerals of our Solar System to solidify around. As everything in the Solar System is made from those first building blocks, the authors say that our planets and moons likely contain intact stardust made by ancient, long-dead stars.