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Boss Shows How Supernova Triggered Solar System Formation |
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Friday, 03 October 2008 |
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Photo: The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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Alan Boss and colleagues, including visiting investigator Sergei Ipatov, are featured in the 20 October issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters for their work on solar system formation. Researchers have thought for several decades that the Solar System formed as a result of a shock wave from a supernova that triggered the collapse of a dense, dusty gas cloud that contracted to form the Sun and the planets. Detailed models of this formation process, however, have only worked under the simplifying assumption that the temperatures during the violent events remained constant. Boss and colleagues have shown for the first time that a supernova could indeed have triggered the Solar System’s formation under the more likely conditions of rapid heating and cooling.
Boss commented, “We’ve had chemical evidence from meteorites that points to a supernova triggering our Solar System’s formation since the 1970s. But the devil has been in the details. Until this study, scientists have not been able to work out a self-consistent scenario, where collapse is triggered at the same time that newly created isotopes from the supernova are injected into the collapsing cloud.”
For more information, see the Astrophysical Journal Letters paper or the CIW press release.
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