Runaway star may have spawned the solar system

A single runaway star that escaped its family -- not the usual close-knit stellar clan -- may have spawned solar system, say planetary scientists.

Meteorites that contain bits of rock called calcium -aluminium-rich inclusions suggest that the solar system may have formed very quickly from the ashes of other stars.

That's because the inclusions formed with the radioactive isotope aluminium-26, which is forged inside stars tens of times as massive as the sun and decays with a halflife of only 720,000 years.

But, a team, led by Vincent Tatischeff of the National Center for Scientific Research in France, claim that a massive star cluster would have been have been so hot that most of the Al-26 would have decayed before planets could congeal. Instead, the scientists say that the solar system sprang from a solitary star's ashes, which could have cooled more quickly, the 'New Scientist' reported.

And, to account for the amount of Al-26 observed in meteorites, the star would still have had to be massive, meaning it probably formed in a clutch of other stars, say the planetary scientist.

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