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2024-12-04

2024-11-25 Effects of nearby supernovæ on Small Bodies in the Solar system

It's like flogging myself. Exery day, more papers to review.


Nearby Supernova and Cloud Crossing Effects on the Orbits of Small Bodies in the Solar System

Supernovae can move stuff

The question asked above sort of answers itself. Of course Supernovae (and other "big bangs") can move anything they impinge upon. How much is maybe a more important question.

Since the ... early 1970s? isotopic data from lunar, then meteorite, samples have shown that the early solar system had been impregnated with nuclei like 26Al, which had a short half-life (7.17*10^5 years), and so a considerable energy release (per unit mass) into the materials they impregnated. Since Al is easily incorporated into silicate minerals, it got all over the place. In the early Solar system, that was a significant source of energy, probably responsible for the (seemingly) easy melting of "small" asteroids, rapid heating of larger bodies. Then it stopped, and normal service (gravitational reorganisation ; colission ; accumulation og heat from the decay of longer-lived isotopes) was resumed. OK ; not "stopped", slowed down and rapidly became insignificant. But this 26Al was a significant source of energy that was present in the early development of the Solar system, and isn't now.

The putative source of this material, and it's associated energy, is a supernova "near" to the early Solar system in it's early days. Consequences include that relatively small bodies (asteroids 4/ Vesta, 16/ Psyche ...) have obviously melted at masses considerably lower than modern Solar system compositions would suggest.

Until the detection of "daughter" isotopes of 26Al in meteorite samples (which daughters were less abundant than in terrestrial camples), this was a pizzle. The discovery of the "daughter" isotopes moved the problem to that of how big, and when, did the supernova erupt, producing the 26Al and injecting it into the pre-Solar nebula? It's very clear that it did, and the short lives of large (supernova-prone) stars makes it un-surprising. So it becomes a standard part of "planetogenesis". An early nearby supernova is accepted as a thing these decades. (If there is a dissenting opinion, I haven't heard it expressed.)

Then come the next questions : what would be the effect of such a supernova on the materials (and their arrangement) in the early Solar system? And also, what would be their effects in later stages of the Solar system? This paper concerns itself primarily with the effects of a strong interstellar wind on particles in the Solar system (which would be a necessity for implanting the above 26Al, though this paper deals with later stages up to and including today.

Essentially, the strong wind applies a "kick" impulse to the orbits of particles. The effect of the kick is strongly related to the size of the particle being considered - a particle of 10cm or larger would be unaffected, while a particle of 1mm diameter would be given sufficient impulse to be destabilised in it's orbit, if not completely ejected from the system. Orbit destabilisation would likely result in the particle accreting onto a larger body, or again, being ejected by a close encounter. The geological record contains enough medium-lifetime nuclei (specifically 60Fe

, half-life 2.6 × 106 years) to estimate a nearby supernova rate of around 2 per 10 million years, meaning that the Solar system is frequently swept clear of it's dusty components. Including Saturn's finer rings - though their regneration from colissions between the larger bodies should regenerate the dusty component on a rapid enough timescale to explain the rings we see.

Ejection from the Oort cloud of a system ndergoing a supernova is, in passing, suggested as a potential origin for bodies like 1I/ `Oumuamua (not that that body is short of origin proposals, from the sensible to the fantastical).

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2024-12-02

Wait, what's this? T CorB

Has T CorB "gone"?

I checked recent results from AAVSO at about 17:30 local time.
StarJDCalendar DateMagnitudeErrorFilterObserver
T Crb2460647.06597 2024 Dec. 02.56597 <6.0 0.1 V HQA
T Crb2460647.03 2024 Dec. 02.53000 9.8 - Vis BRG
T Crb2460646.96597 2024 Dec. 02.46597 <5.6 - Vis TRIB
T Crb2460646.45344 2024 Dec. 01.95344 11.341 0.0048 B DEY

Inevitably, we're under 8/8ths cloud cover here.

18:10 (JD 2,460,647.26182) Not managing to get an updated measurement listing. But that's a fifth of a day ago. (0.19 JD), 4 and a bit hours. Is there a problem in the hardware?

My "Astro-COLIBRI" is reporting an "unclassified optical transient", but that's at a Dec of 31.57° N, which is … actually, that is in the right range (25~35) for the constellation. But T Corb is at dec 25.9°, so … I'm going to have to convert between RA systems.

OK,converter written, the optical transient ("AT2024addv") was only 5 degrees off in declination - which is a plausible error, but 36° off in right ascension, which is not a plusiible error. But the AAVSO website hasn't posted any more results as of 19:15. Then Firefox crashed. [SIGH]

Anything on other astronomy news sites? S&T? Nope. Astronomy.Com ? nope. CBAT ? Nope.

Has T CorB "gone"?

It looks like that was just a glitch - some blockage in AAVSO's pipeline just while the brightest magnitude readings had been posted for ages were at the top of the list. Overnight postings eventually went back to the norm of around 10 mag (Vis). Which is what you expect, but in this case we're poised for a rapid rise cataclysmic eruption.

Oh well, I got one bit of necessary stuff built into my worksheets. Now need the reverse function.

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