Did a Supernova Give Birth to Our Solar System?

The explosive death of a star — that may have been up to a dozen times the sun's mass — might have triggered the formation of the solar system, a new study finds. The sun as well as the rest of the solar system was born from a cloud of gas and dust about 4.6 billion years ago. By searching for telltale patterns that have been left in matter from the dawn of the solar system, Yong-Zhong Qian, co-author of the new study and an astrophysicist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapoli