Supernova Shrapnel Found In Meteorite 105
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the just-missed-the-dinosaurs dept.
from the just-missed-the-dinosaurs dept.
coondoggie writes "Talk about finding a needle in a cosmic haystack. Scientists this week said they found microscopic shrapnel in a meteorite of a star they say exploded around the birth of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago."
Extreme sharpshooting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The wonders of science... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The wonders of science... (Score:0, Interesting)
The comment was just stupid. Not really funny. Mod it back down.
Re:Extreme sharpshooting (Score:5, Interesting)
Davy Crocket didn't have > 2 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 tons of bullets either.
Lots of supernova remnants around (Score:4, Interesting)
Everything on this earth heavier than lead (atomic number 82) comes from supernovae. And most of the other heavy stuff (heavier than iron) comes from them as well.
So we live among a lot of supernova remnants.
But can you name the supernova? (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't RTFA yet either (and I'm hoping to find something a little more reliable/interesting/useful than a NetworkWorld blog), but, reading between the lines of the summary, I think the point is not so much that it comes from a supernova, but that they identified the particular supernova. Which would be pretty amazing. Of course, given the accuracy of detail in a typical slashdot summary, this could actually turn out to be a story about anything from a new supernova being discovered in a distant galaxy to a new exploit in some brand of router whose name sounds like "supernova". :)
Re:Extreme sharpshooting (Score:3, Interesting)
My great-great-great-great(etc)-grandparents are all dead already, so they probably won't be troubled by it.
Has no one else noticed (Score:3, Interesting)
that "Supernova Shrapnel" would be an excellent name for a rock band?
Which Supernova? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which supernova did this shrapnel originate in? Is it still around somewhere, 4.5Gy later? Do we know where it was, or even which direction in today's sky it would be if it were still there?
Re:Supernova Shrapnel??? (Score:5, Interesting)
isn't any atom heavier than Fe technically supernova shrapnel?
Iron is kind of a ground-state on the periodic table. Below that, more energy is required to keep an atom together (hence, why fusion works to release energy), above that it takes less energy to have the atom be smaller (hence, why fission *also* releases energy). Iron is the direction everything trends towards. When every last drop of energy has been squeezed out of the universe, the final super-massive black hole of everything will be made up of a giant ball of iron.