Sunday, June 25, 2023

Just in time

Midsummer occasionned a number of press-releases which could be juxtaposed. Here were two more, on the earliest moments of our solar-system. First, the shields went up in the face of a nearby supernova. I assume this happened during the formation of Jupiter; Earth, forming soon after, finished forming soon after that. Theia and Venus too, by extrapolation although we have very little if-any of these two rocks left, within reach.

I'm somewhat interested in that supernova. We know of other suns formed in our formative starburst, like HD 162826 in Hercules. More likely, it went like this 5 billion years ago: two very large stars were formed nearby, one imploded to create our two suns, then the other large star - which hadn't moved very far yet - imploded. So the two doomed stars would have formed close to one another. Yes I said imploded, not exploded; Type I explosions are standard-candles as aren't as big as Type II can get.

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