Planets made from stellar remnants with hair?

[JohnBStone]

The planets in the solar system are made from the heavier elements created inside earlier and now long dead stars.

Were the planets in our solar system made out of the remnants of one star or many?

If many, then is there any way to identify matter contributed by the different types of stars, such as isotopes, radioactivity, etc?

[01101001]

Wikipedia: Formation and evolution of the Solar System :: Initial formation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System#Initia l_formation)


The current hypothesis of the Solar System's formation is the nebular hypothesis, first proposed in 1734 by Emanuel Swedenborg. [...]

One of these regions of collapsing gas (known as the pre-solar nebula) would form what became the Sun. This region had a diameter of between 7000 and 20,000 AU and a mass just over that of the Sun (between 1.001 and 1.1 solar masses). Its composition was believed to be about the same as the Sun today: about 98% (by mass) hydrogen and helium present since the Big Bang, and 2% heavier elements created by earlier generations of stars which died and ejected them back into interstellar space (see nucleosynthesis).

Space.com: Tracing Our Sun's Family Tree (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070522_st_sun_family.html)


New research into the chemical composition of stars could identify our Sun's long lost family and begin to unravel the complex history of our galaxy.
[...]
Our Sun was born in an open cluster some 4.6 billion years ago, growing alongside its sibling stars like grapes on a vine, theorists say. Meteorites hold evidence for this close companionship in that they contain traces of the radioactive decay of the isotope Iron-60 which is only produced when a large star explodes in a supernova.

The VLT data obtained by De Silva has now confirmed the stars in each open cluster have their own distinctive "flavor."

[JohnBStone]

Thanks. I was aware of the wiki article but I wasn't sure how well mixed a pre-solar-nebula was and whether it was therefore likely that we formed mostly or exclusively out of the remains of one very large star or lots mixed up.

I hadn't seen the space.com one. This suggests that we are from at least a partially mixed cloud and is detectable. Cool.

[01101001]

I hadn't seen the space.com one. This suggests that we are from at least a partially mixed cloud and is detectable. Cool.

Yeah, we might find our siblings some day, though they've likely traveled far away. Mom, Dad, Aunts and Uncles are gone, but maybe we can figure out a little bit about our pedigree.