[meteorite-list] NPA 12-02-1977 Creation of the solar system, Allende Meteorite

[MARK BOSTICK]

Paper: Valley News
City: Van Nuys
Date: Friday, December 2, 1977
Page: Section 1 Page 11

Creation of the solar system

Caltech scientists offer hard facts

     The creation of the solar system from interstellar gas and dust may 
have been triggered by the explosion of a giant star, according to 
scientists at California Institute of Technology, it was reported Thursday.
     The results of study of chemical and physical records preserved in a 
meteorite were said to be the first hard data supporting the theory that a 
supernova explosion brought about our solar system, a Caltech spokesman 
said.
     Such an explosion might have produced enough pressure and density 
increase to start the collapse of the interstellar cloud which eventually 
formed the sun and planets.
     The researchers who reported the study were Dimitri Papanastassiou, 
Malcolm McCulloch, Typhoon Lee and Gerland Wasserburg, all of Caltech's 
division of geological and planetary sciences.
     They examined material from the Allende Meteorite, a two-ton object 
which fell in Northern Mexico in 1969. It contains calcium and aluminum-rich 
particles which are believed to represent the first matter which condensed 
from the collapsing cloud of gas and dust.
     The scientists said they found unexpected isotopes in three elements, 
calcium, barium and neodymium. The "isotopic anomalies" proved that the gas 
and dust.
     The scientists said the found unexpected isotopes in three elements, 
calcium, barium and neodymium. The "isotopic anomalies" proved that the gas 
and dust which made up the solar system were not a completely uniform mix, 
but contained injected material from other sources.
     According to nuclear physics theories, many of the anomalous isotopes 
could only have been produced by the "rapid neutron capture process" which 
occurs in very hot exploding stars.
     The scientists said that from one-tenth of one percent to one percent 
of the chemical elements in the solar system may have been produced by the 
supernova which was about 10 times the size of our sun.
     They dated the explosion of the giant star at about two million years 
before the solar system was formed.
     The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the 
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

(end)

Clear Skies,
Mark Bostick
Wichita, Kansas
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