The Sun Had Sisters

[TheBORG] writes to mention a Space.com article about the Sun's departed solar siblings. Our own medium-sized yellow star was far from alone when it was formed, with hundreds of fellow solar bodies and a supernova to keep it company. From the article: "The evidence for the solar sisters was found in daughters--such as decayed particles from radioactive isotopes of iron--trapped in meteorites, which can be studied as fossil remnants of the early solar system. These daughter species allowed Looney and his colleagues to discern that a supernova with the mass of about 20 suns exploded relatively near the early Sun when it formed 4.6 billion years ago; and where there are supernovas or any massive star, you also see hundreds to thousands of sun-like stars, he said. The cluster of thousands of stars dispersed billions of years ago due to a lack of gravitational pull, Looney said, leaving the sisters 'lost in space' and our Sun looking like an only child ever since, he said."

Re:Huh?

[arth1]

Another thing I find odd is the timeline. The universe is around 14 billion years old, and the solar system around 5-6 billion years old. The heavy elements we find in the solar system must have come from supernovas or similar, but type II supernovas take an awful long time to mature, so there can't have been several generations of them; the universe is just too young.
I'm surprised that the Universe is as developed as it is, being this young.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:Dearly Departed

[Doc Ruby]

Or it was something else. You can't just infer the scenario you describe was the one. The one I described, collision/dragging interaction with the supernova mass, is just as plausible. The ambiguity is at the center of "what happened?", and there are many mutually exclusive and combinatory possiblities.