Ultraviolet tagged posts

Ultraviolet shines light on Origins of the Solar System

Artist rendition of the protosun and the solar nebula. Oxygen isotopes can be altered by ultraviolet light (gold arrows). Short-lived radiogenic isotopes of aluminum (maroon wavy arrows) may also have been injected into the solar nebula. Insets: electron backscatter images from calcium-aluminum inclusions and the approximate location at which these high-temperature condensates formed.

Credit: NASA JPL-Caltech/Lyons/ASU

In the search to discover the origins of our solar system, an international team including planetary scientists has compared the composition of the sun to the composition of the most ancient materials that formed in our solar system: refractory inclusions in unmetamorphosed meteorites.

By analyzing the oxygen isotopes (varieties of an element that have some extra neutr...

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