TY - JOUR
T1 - Live radioisotopes as signatures of nearby supernovae
AU - Fields, Brian D.
N1 - Funding Information:
I am grateful to the organizers for an outstanding meeting, and the participants for lively and fruitful discussions. I am indebted to my collaborators John Ellis, Peter McCullough, and Vasiliki Pavlidou, and to the anonymous referee whose suggestions improved this paper. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-0092939.
Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2004/2
Y1 - 2004/2
N2 - Nearby (≲1 kpc) supernovae were almost certainly common in earth's geological history. Such events allow the direct study of their freshly synthesized live radioisotopes, opening new windows onto supernovae. Very close supernovae (within a few tens of pc) may deposit radioisotopes directly on the earth. Recent high-sensitivity accelerator mass spectrometry measurements of deep-ocean samples find live 60Fe at levels that greatly exceed background, suggesting an explosion occurred within 30 pc during the last 5 Myr. Somewhat more distant - but also more frequent - supernovae leave observable signatures of radioisotopes whose decay includes γ-ray line emission. In particular, a large, old supernova remnant was recently discovered at ∼100 pc, and appears to contain 26Al. If confirmed, this would be the first detection of 26Al in a single remnant, and would be a new probe of supernova nucleosynthesis and astrophysics.
AB - Nearby (≲1 kpc) supernovae were almost certainly common in earth's geological history. Such events allow the direct study of their freshly synthesized live radioisotopes, opening new windows onto supernovae. Very close supernovae (within a few tens of pc) may deposit radioisotopes directly on the earth. Recent high-sensitivity accelerator mass spectrometry measurements of deep-ocean samples find live 60Fe at levels that greatly exceed background, suggesting an explosion occurred within 30 pc during the last 5 Myr. Somewhat more distant - but also more frequent - supernovae leave observable signatures of radioisotopes whose decay includes γ-ray line emission. In particular, a large, old supernova remnant was recently discovered at ∼100 pc, and appears to contain 26Al. If confirmed, this would be the first detection of 26Al in a single remnant, and would be a new probe of supernova nucleosynthesis and astrophysics.
KW - Nucleosynthesis
KW - Supernovae
KW - γ-rays
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U2 - 10.1016/j.newar.2003.11.017
DO - 10.1016/j.newar.2003.11.017
M3 - Short survey
AN - SCOPUS:0742302562
SN - 1387-6473
VL - 48
SP - 119
EP - 123
JO - New Astronomy Reviews
JF - New Astronomy Reviews
IS - 1-4
ER -