I am not the best cook, but I can make some really good oatmeal muffins. Usually. There is always that one place in that one muffin, however, where things just didn’t mix right, and a clump of flour or sugar makes it through the baking process to break apart as a gritty surprise. These failed attempts at muffin mixing aren’t unique to my baking attempts. In fact, our solar system has at least one unmixed rock that is the remains of just one of the many supernovae that formed the material of our solar system. Named Hypatia and found in the desert of Egypt, this meteor has a pocket of material that is best explained as the raw ingredients from a type 1a supernova.

Lead researcher Jan Kramer explains: We found a consistent pattern of trace element abundances that is completely different from anything in the solar system, primitive or evolved. Objects in the asteroid belt and meteors don’t match this either. So next we looked outside the solar system.

This work is published in a new paper in the journal Icarus.

Kramer further explains: In a sense, we could say, we have ‘caught’ a supernova Ia explosion ‘in the act’ because the gas atoms from the explosion were caught in the surrounding dust cloud, which eventually formed Hypatia’s parent body.

Let’s break that down. 

A type 1a supernova is an exploding white dwarf star. They explode with a specific energy and brightness, and a well-understood variety of atoms formed in the process. In theory, that material, along with the material from any number of other supernovae, comes in a whole mix of elements. That material then forms a giant molecular cloud, mixing with other material left over from the formation of the universe. And all this mixing of atoms and molecules then eventually forms solar systems like ours, after it gets well mixed – we thought – but just like my Kitchen Aid can struggle, so too can the Universe.

So now you know.

More Information

University of Johannesburg press release

“The chemistry of the extraterrestrial carbonaceous stone “Hypatia”: A perspective on dust heterogeneity in interstellar space,” Jan D. Kramers et al., 2022 April 28, Icarus