564 research outputs found
The consequences of a nearby supernova on the early Solar System
If the Sun was born in a relatively compact open cluster, it is quite likely
that a massive (10MSun) star was nearby when it exploded in a supernova. The
repercussions of a supernova can be rather profound, and the current Solar
System may still bear the memory of this traumatic event. The truncation of the
Kuiper belt and the tilt of the ecliptic plane with respect to the Sun's
rotation axis could be such signatures. We simulated the effect of a nearby
supernova on the young Solar System using the Astronomical Multipurpose
Software Environment. Our calculations are realized in two subsequent steps in
which we study the effect of the supernova irradiation on the circumstellar
disk and the effect of the impact of the nuclear blast-wave which arrives a few
decades later. We find that the blastwave of our adopted supernova exploding at
a distance of --\,pc and at an angle of -- with
respect to the angular-momentum axis of the circumsolar disk would induce a
misalignment between the Sun's equator and its disk to ,
consistent with the current value. The blast of a supernova truncates the disk
at a radius between and \,au, which is consistent with the current
edge of the Kuiper belt. For the most favored parameters, the irradiation by
the supernova as well as the blast wave heat the majority of the disk to \,K, which is sufficiently hot to melt chondrules in the circumstellar
disk. The majority of planetary system may have been affected by a nearby
supernova, some of its repercussions, such as truncation and tilting of the
disk, may still be visible in their current planetary system's topology. The
amount of material from the supernova blast wave that is accreted by the
circumstellar disk is too small by several orders of magnitude to explain the
current abundance of the short live radionuclide Al.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&
Development of a fast laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry cell for sub-µm scanning of layered materials
Performance data are reported for a commercially available laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) setup, equipped with a custom-made cell. The low dispersion ablation cell and the connecting tubing achieve a 99% washout of the aerosol in similar to 6 ms, enabling separated pulse responses at frequencies up to 200-300 Hz. In addition, the cell employed supports a post-acquisition methodology for the deconvolution of overlapping ablation positions in scanning mode by an iterative Richardson-Lucy algorithm. This enables correction of the distortion in the scan profile upon traversing layers with dimensions below the physical size of the laser beam. By overlapping the ablation positions of a 1 mu m diameter laser beam, a lateral resolution in the order of 0.3 +/- 0.1 mu m was demonstrated for scanning of mu m-sized layers in high capacitance multi-layer ceramic capacitors
Fast high resolution 2D and 3D laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry imaging via deconvolution approaches and ablation cell design
- …