Our solar system seems to have been blown into existence by the winds of a nearby massive star.
Most astrophysicists think the solar system formed from a cloud of gas and dust squeezed by a nearby supernova blast, says Martin Bizzarro at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Supernovae produce the isotope iron-60, so Bizzarro’s team looked for it in meteorites that formed in the first million years of the solar system’s history. In vain: “There was no iron-60, ruling out the supernova trigger mechanism,” Bizzarro says.
However, they found another isotope, aluminium-26, that suggests an alternative (Science, vol…
