Meenakshi Wadhwa is an expert in cosmology, cosmochemistry and various planetary sciences. Her research focuses on time scales and the processes involved in the formation and evolution of the solar system and planets.
Wadhwa is the director and professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration.
She has hunted for meteorites in Antactica with the U.S. Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) program.
I still get chills when I hold a piece of an asteroid formed 4½ billion years ago. The scale of that time period when you think about it, it’s hard to wrap your mind around it, but it’s so thrilling to think you actually can look back in time through these objects. It’s so fun to just imagine where they’ve been and what they’ve seen and what they’ve been witness to. For me that’s always been a thrill and I’ve never lost that excitement.
