The Birth Environment of the Solar System

By Fred C. Adams. 2010

388 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This review examines our current understanding of the possible birth environments of our Solar System. Because most stars form within groups and clusters, the question becomes one of determining the nature of the birth aggregate of the Sun. This discussion starts by reviewing Solar System properties that provide constraints on our environmental history. We then outline the range of star-forming environments that are available in the Galaxy and discuss how they affect star and planet formation. The nature of the solar birth cluster is constrained by many physical considerations, including radiation fields provided by the background environment, dynamical scattering interactions, and by the necessity of producing the short-lived radioactive nuclear species inferred from meteoritic measurements. Working scenarios for the solar birth aggregate can be constructed, as discussed herein, although significant uncertainties remain.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d485a167d9a901ea97389899bcdae4e6c83b8d99

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Citations in the corpus

The effects of fly‐bys on planetary systems (2010, background): “Our understanding of the birth environment of the Solar system was recently reviewed by Adams (2010).”
Our astrochemical heritage (2012, background): “A crowded violent environment Several lines of evidence converge toward a picture where the Sun was born in a cluster of at least 1000 stars (see the review by Adams 2010).”
Kinematics in Young Star Clusters and Associations with Gaia DR2 (2018, background): “While star formation in the Galaxy occurs in large star-forming complexes, most of the stars formed in these complexes quickly disperse into the field without remaining bound to one another as members of open clusters (Adams 2010; Gouliermis 2018).”
A Perspective from Extinct Radionuclides on a Young Stellar Object: The Sun and Its Accretion Disk (2011, background): “The Sun was born in a molecular cloud, probably nearby other newborn stars (Adams 2010, Lada & Lada 2003).”
EXCLUSION OF COSMIC RAYS IN PROTOPLANETARY DISKS: STELLAR AND MAGNETIC EFFECTS (2013, background): “In summary, the relative contribution from external versus internal processes is still unclear (for an extensive discussion see Adams 2010, and references therein), but we know that the early Solar System was to some degree enriched by external sources.”
LOW VIRIAL PARAMETERS IN MOLECULAR CLOUDS: IMPLICATIONS FOR HIGH-MASS STAR FORMATION AND MAGNETIC FIELDS (2013, background): “…cloud simulations with initial virial parameters α > 1 (e.g., series of simulations started by Bate et al. 2002) or α < 1 (e.g., Hennebelle et al. 2011) may apply, and why some stellar clusters might be born with velocity dispersions too low to balance self–gravity (see Adams 2010 for a summary).”
Observations of the Icy Universe (2015, background): “LYSOs in clustered and high radiation environments of nearby massive stars may be more representative of the early solar system than isolated YSOs (Adams, 2010).”
Melting and differentiation of early-formed asteroids: The perspective from high precision oxygen isotope studies (2017, background): “Solar System formation began when a dense molecular cloud underwent gravitational collapse to produce an active protostar embedded in an extended disc of gas and dust (Adams, 2010; Boss et al., 2010).”
The planet nine hypothesis (2019, background): “2008), planet formation (Armitage, 2010), early dynamical evolution (Nesvorný, 2018), and the birth environment of the solar system (Adams, 2010), as well as the references therein.”
EVIDENCE FOR SLOW MIGRATION OF NEPTUNE FROM THE INCLINATION DISTRIBUTION OF KUIPER BELT OBJECTS (2015, background): “The disk could have been truncated, for example, by photoevaporation or a close stellar encounter (e.g., Adams 2010; Kretke et al. 2012).”
Origin and Evolution of Short-period Comets (2017, background): “The early stages, when the Sun presumably interacted with other stars in an embedded globular cluster (Adams 2010), are not considered here.”
RADIATION MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS OF PROTOSTELLAR COLLAPSE: NONIDEAL MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC EFFECTS AND EARLY FORMATION OF CIRCUMSTELLAR DISKS (2015, background): “At least for our solar system, there is meteoritic evidence that short-lived radionuclides such as 26Al existed when the solar nebula formed (Adams 2010).”