Supernova Shrapnel Found In Meteorite

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Supernova Shrapnel Found In Meteorite

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday September 9, 2010 @04:52AM from the just-missed-the-dinosaurs dept.

coondoggie writes "Talk about finding a needle in a cosmic haystack. Scientists this week said they found microscopic shrapnel in a meteorite of a star they say exploded around the birth of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago."

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Extreme sharpshooting by Drakkenmensch · 2010-09-09 04:59 · Score: 1, Interesting

Imagine shooting blindly at the sky, and your bullet making it to a life sustaining planet billions of miles away by sheer blind luck. Not even Davy Crockett could pull off a shot like that!
1. Re:Extreme sharpshooting by Nadaka · 2010-09-09 05:13 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Davy Crocket didn't have > 2 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 tons of bullets either.
2. Re:Extreme sharpshooting by Zenaku · 2010-09-09 05:27 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  My great-great-great-great(etc)-grandparents are all dead already, so they probably won't be troubled by it.
  
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Re:The wonders of science... by DamienRBlack · 2010-09-09 05:04 · Score: 1, Interesting

My troll detector must be fuzzy from lack of sleep. I've got the mod points but I just can't decide if you're funny or trolling or heaven forbid, serious.
Re:The wonders of science... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-09 05:10 · Score: 0, Interesting

The comment was just stupid. Not really funny. Mod it back down.
Lots of supernova remnants around by GlobalEcho · 2010-09-09 05:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

Everything on this earth heavier than lead (atomic number 82) comes from supernovae. And most of the other heavy stuff (heavier than iron) comes from them as well.
So we live among a lot of supernova remnants.
But can you name the supernova? by Xtifr · 2010-09-09 05:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

I didn't RTFA yet either (and I'm hoping to find something a little more reliable/interesting/useful than a NetworkWorld blog), but, reading between the lines of the summary, I think the point is not so much that it comes from a supernova, but that they identified the particular supernova. Which would be pretty amazing. Of course, given the accuracy of detail in a typical slashdot summary, this could actually turn out to be a story about anything from a new supernova being discovered in a distant galaxy to a new exploit in some brand of router whose name sounds like "supernova". :)
Has no one else noticed by wiredog · 2010-09-09 05:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

that "Supernova Shrapnel" would be an excellent name for a rock band?

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Which Supernova? by Doc+Ruby · 2010-09-09 06:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

Which supernova did this shrapnel originate in? Is it still around somewhere, 4.5Gy later? Do we know where it was, or even which direction in today's sky it would be if it were still there?

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Re:Supernova Shrapnel??? by ImprovOmega · 2010-09-09 08:56 · Score: 5, Interesting

isn't any atom heavier than Fe technically supernova shrapnel?
Iron is kind of a ground-state on the periodic table. Below that, more energy is required to keep an atom together (hence, why fusion works to release energy), above that it takes less energy to have the atom be smaller (hence, why fission *also* releases energy). Iron is the direction everything trends towards. When every last drop of energy has been squeezed out of the universe, the final super-massive black hole of everything will be made up of a giant ball of iron.