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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The wonders of science... by grub · 2010-09-09 04:52 · Score: 5, Funny

Remarkable!

Think of the odds: this meteorite landed 146 years ago in 1864.

What are the chances that something would be flying around the solar system for nearly 4.5 billion years then hit this wee planet which was Created only 5854 years earlier?

Most amazing indeed.

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Trolling is a art,
1. Re:The wonders of science... by TitusC3v5 · 2010-09-09 05:13 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  TFA was really sparse on details. It didn't even say what kind of super powers it would give us if we came in contact with it.
  
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  And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
2. Re:The wonders of science... by AffidavitDonda · 2010-09-09 05:28 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  it will give you Hemolysis and survival of autologous red blood cells salvaged after cemented and uncemented total hip arthroplasty
3. Re:The wonders of science... by c++0xFF · 2010-09-09 08:15 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  What are the chances that something would be flying around
  the solar system for nearly 4.5 billion years then hit this wee planet which
  was Created only 5854 years earlier?
  Easy: 50%. Either it'll happen or it won't. Pretty good odds, I'd say.
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.
Re:Supernova Shrapnel??? by radtea · 2010-09-09 05:13 · Score: 5, Informative

isn't any atom heavier than Fe technically supernova shrapnel?
Not if you consider "shrapnel" to mean "fragments that are small but not gaseous". The point here is that a nanoscale grain of chromium54 has been found, which suggests it cooled out of the supernova gas cloud and was driven into the meteroite during a collision, so it is a more-or-less pristine piece of supernova condensate that has not been processed further, the way the iron on Earth has, for example.
That's a fairly interesting find, I'd say.

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Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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.