Even though it has been millions of years of human evolution, there are still several unsolved mysteries surrounding us and our home planet. It was assumed until now that it was actually a supernova, which had created the sun and the sun had then spewed out the necessary materials and pieces to form the planets. However, a recent study now claims that the entire solar system might have been formed in a super-hot bubble.
The new study, which was conducted by a group of scientists from the University of Chicago, and published in The Astrophysical Journal, declares that the solar system wasn't the result of a Supernova but gigantic and enormously hot bubbles, originated from equally or more gigantic hot stars.
The galaxy is full of massive and tremendously hot stars, which are several times larger than the sun, such as the Wolf-Rayet stars. So, when these Wolf-Rayet stars drop their mass, they might come in contact with the stellar winds and craft solid bubble formation, surrounding them. Fundamentally, these bubbles work as kind of an incubation chamber for the comparatively smaller stars and that might include our very own Sun.
A supernova usually creates isotopes aluminum-26 and iron-60. While our solar system contains a lot of the former isotope, it doesn't really have much of the later one like other star systems. This indicates that a simple supernova cannot be responsible for the creation of our solar system and that there must be something powerful enough to create a star that's only capable of producing lots of aluminum-26. This is when the scientists started looking around and guess what! The Wolf-Rayet stars do just that.
According to a co-author of the study, Vikram Dwarkadas, aluminum-26 must be the centre of attention for this newly formed theory about the origin of our solar system. "The idea is that aluminum-26 flung from the Wolf-Rayet star is carried outwards on grains of dust formed around the star. These grains have enough momentum to punch through one side of the shell, where they are mostly destroyed—trapping the aluminum inside the shell," stated Dwarkadas.
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Once the outer shell of the giant hot bubble crumples, it gradually forms an entire solar system. Possibly, the Wolf-Rayet star, which might have birthed our solar system, is already gone. Maybe it had collapsed into a giant black hole, millions of years ago, which is prowling somewhere in the universe.
However, the theory and the study regarding this is currently in its nascent stages and it could take a while for us to figure out the origin of our solar system.
