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Solar system formation...

 
 
BobT
 
Reply Sun 19 Mar, 2017 07:33 pm
Hi all,

I have a question about the origins of our solar system that yet very simple it seems to have been overlooked in the info I've been looking at. Wanted to get some input from the learned ones (I'm EE/CS) in the field.

Let me see if I can phrase it properly:
Somewhere in our local area there must have been a supernova so that there are elements above iron (Fe) and I'm sure based on the %s someone could work out the location of this event. The SuperNova star used up all the hydrogen in the process. Somehow there is all this hydrogen after the fact and being the lightest element it coalesces in the middle of the remnants with no heavy elements (WTF gravity) to form our star. Can anyone help me with fog that obscures my reasoning as to why there is so much hydrogen and how does it gravitate towards the center?

TIA Very Happy
 
Krumple
 
  4  
Reply Sun 19 Mar, 2017 08:16 pm
@BobT,
It doesn't work like that.

When a supernova occurs the shock wave moves out and compresses the gas in front of it like a snow plow through snow. This causes pockets of hydrogen gas to condense further. So out of one supernova you can get hundreds of star births.

Also a star never uses up 100% of its hydrogen. The supernova occurs when the core of the star is saturated with iron! Iron does not fuse like the other atoms do. It strangles the fusion process within the stars core causing it to collapse because it's not contributing to the outward explosive pressure caused by the fusion process.

This starts a chain reaction of collapse until the core pressure builds rebounding with a massive expulsion of its outter layers.

A side note, the surface of our sun is made of iron plasma isotope. Its iron! I know what you must now be thinking..

I thought stars only fuse hydrogen and helium. Why is our star's surface iron and didn't you just say iron causes a supernova?

Yep.

Stars don't just fuse hydrogen and helium. They fuse in sets of twos up until iron. They will continue to fuse atoms until there is too much iron in their cores. Our sun will do the same but it will not blow up in a supernova because it's too small to create the critical density to explode.

Instead the core will be strangled and it will attempt to collapse but when the pressure builds it will just cause our sun to expand to the size of mar's orbit or even bigger. This will cause it to lose density and it will start spitting out rings of gas losing mass until it shrinks tobecome a white dwarf.

rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Mon 20 Mar, 2017 04:19 am
@Krumple,
Nice job on that answer.
McGentrix
 
  1  
Reply Mon 20 Mar, 2017 07:00 am
@rosborne979,
rosborne979 wrote:

Nice job on that answer.


Yes. Good answer.
0 Replies
 
 

 
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