Other
Scientific paper
May 2003
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003psrd.repte..72t&link_type=abstract
Planetary Science Research Discoveries
Other
Solar System Formation, Supernova, Supernova Trigger, Meteorites, Isotope, Short-Lived Isotopes
Scientific paper
One of the most amazing discoveries in space science is the unambiguous evidence from meteorites that the solar nebula (the cloud of gas and dust in which the Sun and planets formed) contained radioactive isotopes with half-lives so short that they no longer exist. These include isotopes with very short half-lives, such as calcium-41 (100,000 years) and aluminum-26 (740,000 years), and those with longer half-lives such as plutonium-244 (81 million years). The short-lived isotopes are particularly interesting. If they formed in an exploding star, that explosion might have triggered the collapse of the huge interstellar cloud in which the Sun formed. On the other hand, if they formed in the solar nebula by intense radiation close to the Sun, then it would prove some hypotheses about the young Sun and jets of radiation from it.
As synthesized and lucidly explained by Ernst Zinner (Washington University in St. Louis), recent data from ancient objects in meteorites point strongly to the supernova trigger idea. K. K. Marhas and J. N. Goswami (Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India), and A. M. Davis (University of Chicago) found clear evidence in meteorites that beryllium-10, the one isotope that everybody agrees can be produced by solar radiation, is not accompanied by other short-lived isotopes as it would be if they were all produced by radiation flowing from the young Sun. (Beryllium-10 can also be made by galactic cosmic rays in the interstellar molecular cloud from which the solar system formed.) Two other research groups reported at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (March, 2003) that unmetamorphosed ordinary chondrites contained iron-60, an extinct isotope with a half-life of 1.5 million years. Iron-60 cannot be produced by intense, energetic solar radiation, so it must have been made before the Solar System began to form. The best bet is that much of it was made during the supernova explosion that triggered the formation of the Solar System.
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