The Sun's Birth Environment: Context for Meteoritics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Desch, Steve, Miret-Roig, Núria
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Desch, Steve
Miret-Roig, Núria
author_facet Desch, Steve
Miret-Roig, Núria
contents Meteorites trace planet formation in the Sun's protoplanetary disk, but they also record the influence of the Sun's birth environment. Whether the Sun formed in a region like Taurus-Auriga with ~10^2 stars, or a region like the Carina Nebula with ~10^6 stars, matters for how large the Sun's disk was, for how long and from how far away it accreted gas from the molecular cloud, and how it acquired radionuclides like 26Al. To provide context for the interpretation of meteoritic data, we review what is known about the Sun's birth environment. Based on an inferred gas disk outer radius ~50-90 AU, radial transport in the disk, and the abundances of noble gases in Jupiter's atmosphere, the Sun's molecular cloud and protoplanetary disk were exposed to an ultraviolet flux G0 ~30-3000 during its birth and first ~10 Myr of evolution. Based on the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects, the Solar System was subsequently exposed to a stellar density ~100 Msol/pc^3 for ~100 Myr, strongly implying formation in a bound cluster. These facts suggest formation in a region like the outskirts of the Orion Nebula, perhaps 2 pc from the center. The protoplanetary disk might have accreted gas for many Myr, but a few x10^5 yr seems more likely. It probably inherited radionuclides from its molecular cloud, enriched by inputs from supernovae and especially Wolf-Rayet star winds, and acquired a typical amount of 26Al.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_10638
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Sun's Birth Environment: Context for Meteoritics
Desch, Steve
Miret-Roig, Núria
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Geophysics
Meteorites trace planet formation in the Sun's protoplanetary disk, but they also record the influence of the Sun's birth environment. Whether the Sun formed in a region like Taurus-Auriga with ~10^2 stars, or a region like the Carina Nebula with ~10^6 stars, matters for how large the Sun's disk was, for how long and from how far away it accreted gas from the molecular cloud, and how it acquired radionuclides like 26Al. To provide context for the interpretation of meteoritic data, we review what is known about the Sun's birth environment. Based on an inferred gas disk outer radius ~50-90 AU, radial transport in the disk, and the abundances of noble gases in Jupiter's atmosphere, the Sun's molecular cloud and protoplanetary disk were exposed to an ultraviolet flux G0 ~30-3000 during its birth and first ~10 Myr of evolution. Based on the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects, the Solar System was subsequently exposed to a stellar density ~100 Msol/pc^3 for ~100 Myr, strongly implying formation in a bound cluster. These facts suggest formation in a region like the outskirts of the Orion Nebula, perhaps 2 pc from the center. The protoplanetary disk might have accreted gas for many Myr, but a few x10^5 yr seems more likely. It probably inherited radionuclides from its molecular cloud, enriched by inputs from supernovae and especially Wolf-Rayet star winds, and acquired a typical amount of 26Al.
title The Sun's Birth Environment: Context for Meteoritics
topic Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Geophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.10638