2008/09/18 by Alan P. Boss, Sergei I. Ipatov, Sandra A. Keiser +2 · 4 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Planetary Science and Exploration #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/593057
12 pages, 4 color figures. Astrophysical Journal Letters (in press)
arxiv created 2008/09/18 · openalex publication_date 2008/09/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Cosmochemical evidence for the existence of short-lived radioisotopes (SLRIs) such as 26 Al and 60 Fe at the time of the formation of primitive meteorites requires that these isotopes were synthesized in a massive star and then incorporated into chondrites within ~10 6 yr. A supernova shock wave has long been hypothesized to have transported the SLRIs to the presolar dense cloud core, triggered cloud collapse, and injected the isotopes. Previous numerical calculations have shown that this scenario is plausible when the shock wave and dense cloud core are assumed to be isothermal at ~10 K, but not when compressional heating to ~1000 K is assumed. We show here for the first time that when calculated with the FLASH2.5 adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) hydrodynamics code, a 20 km s −1 shock wave can indeed trigger the collapse of a 1 M ☉ cloud while simultaneously injecting shock wave isotopes into the collapsing cloud, provided that cooling by molecular species such as H 2 O, CO 2 , and H 2 is included. These calculations imply that the supernova trigger hypothesis is the most likely mechanism for delivering the SLRIs present during the formation of the solar system.