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Project Progress

We have continued our investigations into how supernova material is injected into protoplanetary disks, and what the observational consequences would be. This has resulted in 3 journal papers submitted during the reporting period.

The first, by ASU co-I Steve Desch, former Ph.D. student Nicolas Ouellette and collaborator Jeff Hester, represents much of the doctoral thesis work by Ouellette. In this paper (Ouellette et al. 2010, in revision, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal), we investigate the efficiency with which dust grains can condense from supernova ejecta (reviewing astronomical observations), and perform numerical calculations of the trajectories of those grains as the ejecta flows into and around protoplanetary disks.

The second is by ASU graduate student Carola Ellinger, collaborator Patrick Young and co-I Desch. In this paper (Ellinger et al. 2010, in revision, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal), we investigate the collateral shifts in solar nebula oxygen isotopes that would accompany injection of supernova material sufficient to produce the abundances of short-lived radionuclides like 26Al inferred from meteorites to have existed in the protoplanetary disk. These isotopic shifts are regarded in the meteoritics community as a firm test of the hypothesis that supernovae injected radionuclides into our protoplanetary disk. This work was also presented at the 2009 meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Nancy, France. It represents an especially close interaction between meteoriticists and astrophysicists.