Solar System May be 2 Million Years Older Than we Thought

[MeteorWayne]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/s ... 00822.html

The solar system may be up to two million years older than previously thought, a new study has found.

Researchers studying bits of a meteorite discovered that the space rock was 4.5682 billion years old, predating previous estimates of the solar system's age by up to 1.9 million years. This adjustment, though ever so slight, should help astronomers better understand how the sun and planets formed.

........

Age of the solar system

And even such small adjustments to the solar system's age can be very important to astronomers seeking to understand how the sun and planets formed.

As an example, Bouvier and Wadhwa cite the abundance of the isotope iron-60 in the proto-solar system. Iron-60 is radioactive, with a half-life of about 2.6 million years. Every 2.6 million years, half of the iron-60 in a given sample decays away.

So if you push the age of the solar system back by about two million years, that means there was almost twice as much iron-60 present during its birth than previously thought. And this increased concentration has consequences: it strongly supports the idea that a supernova exploded nearby during the solar system's formation, injecting huge quantities of heat that helped nascent bodies differentiate....

 

[silylene]

...

The solar system may be up to two million years older than previously thought, a new study has found.

Researchers studying bits of a meteorite discovered that the space rock was 4.5682 billion years old, predating previous estimates of the solar system's age by up to 1.9 million years. .......

I am surprised that these researchers think they can measure this so accurately. (I smell a whiff of bogacity unaccounted for here!)

 

[csmyth3025]

I am surprised that these researchers think they can measure this so accurately. (I smell a whiff of bogacity unaccounted for here!)

Bogosity is one of those wonderfully obscure words which, once I discover them, I pray I'll find the perfect occasion to use them. Not only have you given me a gem of a word to oratorically devastate some future questionable statement, my research of the word bogosity has also given me the terms bogon (the imaginary elementary particle of bogosity) and cluon (the imaginary elementary particle of cluefulness) - as in "There may be a cluon hidden among all the bogons in that theory".

Chris

 

[ZenGalacticore]

I agree with Silylene. Not only on the accuracy of any measurement, but how could a mere 1.9 million years be in any way significant on a scale of 4.7 or 5 billion?

 

[csmyth3025]

I agree with Silylene. Not only on the accuracy of any measurement, but how could a mere 1.9 million years be in any way significant on a scale of 4.7 or 5 billion?

According to the SDC article:

This number is only a hair older than previous estimates of the solar system's age, which were chiefly gleaned from dating CAI's in other meteorites. But the difference is real, according to Wadhwa....
...And even such small adjustments to the solar system's age can be very important to astronomers seeking to understand how the sun and planets formed.

As an example, Bouvier and Wadhwa cite the abundance of the isotope iron-60 in the proto-solar system. Iron-60 is radioactive, with a half-life of about 2.6 million years. Every 2.6 million years, half of the iron-60 in a given sample decays away.

So if you push the age of the solar system back by about two million years, that means there was almost twice as much iron-60 present during its birth than previously thought. And this increased concentration has consequences: it strongly supports the idea that a supernova exploded nearby during the solar system's formation, injecting huge quantities of heat that helped nascent bodies differentiate.

"Iron-60 is kind of a smoking gun," Wadhwa said. "If present in certain abundances, it can only really be there because of a supernova injection."

Astronomers can do this sort of sleuthing with many different isotopes that have relatively short half-lives. So nailing down the solar system's age precisely is key.

"It gives us a better understanding of the type of environment the solar system evolved in," Wadhwa said.

The sentence that puzzles me is this one: "So if you push the age of the solar system back by about two million years, that means there was almost twice as much iron-60 present during its birth than previously thought."

How did they come up with the abundance of iron-60 that they previously thought existed during the formation of the solar system? Were they able to determine the abundance of iron-60 from other meteorites they studied? Was the abundance of iron-60 in this meteorite different?

Chris