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The explosion
Massive stars don't live long. And they die explosively.
"When that happens, anything in their surroundings is going to get peppered with newly synthesized material,"
including iron-60, Hester explained. "Then you pick up a meteorite [on Earth] and find just the pattern of isotopic
abundances that you would expect to find if the young solar system were peppered with newly synthesized material
from a supernova. Once you see it, it is almost embarrassingly obvious."
Among the mysteries addressed by the new scenario is the puzzling abrupt end to the Kuiper Belt, a region of
cometlike objects that extends a ways beyond Neptune.
"Ultraviolet radiation would also have played a role in the organic chemistry of the young solar system," said Laurie
Leshin, a cosmochemist at Arizona State University who contributed to the analysis along with Steve Desch and
Kevin Healy.
The injection of radioactive material from a supernova might even have helped create ultimately hospitable
conditions on Earth, the scientists speculate. Importantly, the whole theory comes with testable predictions.
"Assuming that it holds up — and I believe it will — this is a theory that both greatly clarifies the way that most
stars in the universe probably form, and also ties the properties of the solar system and Earth itself back to the
conditions in the larger astrophysical environment in which we formed," Hester said.
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