IPUSS · The initial 244Pu abundance of the Solar System

The initial 244Pu abundance of the Solar System

The increasing knowledge of the short-lived radioactive isotope systems allows us to decipher the nature and timing of chemical variation during the first few hundred million years following the formation of the Solar System and even to constrain the pre-solar history of the Solar System matter. However, to obtain a consistent picture of the earliest processes, the abundance of each short lived radionuclide at the time of the formation of the Sun has to be inferred with very high accuracy. Plutonium-244 (244Pu) is one of the short-lived radionuclides (with a half-life of 80 million years) that is produced by the rapid neutron-capture process (the r process) within neutron star mergers and rare supernovae. The goal of the IPUSS 753276 project was to obtain the best estimate of the initial 244Pu content of the Solar System. In addition, the project proposed to use the initial abundance estimate to constrain the time of the last stellar event that added r-process nuclides to the pre-solar nebula. In principle, the 244Pu-Xe system can also be used as chronometer to date early volatile loss events in Solar System solids. IPUSS proposed to evaluate this chronometer using the new uncertainties of the improved estimate. The main objective regarding transfer of knowledge was to bridge the gap between cosmochemistry and the theoretical astrophysics field of galactic chemical evolution. Pető connected the local team at the Konkoly Observatory to the European community of cosmochemistry. The supervisor Maria Lugaro, who is a leading scientist in stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis, connected Pető's research to already existing research directions on short-lived radioactive nuclei at the institute and integrated Pető within the local scientific community in Hungary.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз