Astron. Astrophys. 351, 759-765 (1999)

6. Conclusions

It has been shown that a nearby GRB could have melted pre-existing dust balls in the pre-planetary solar nebula and produced chondrules across the nebula at the same time. The probability of a GRB occurring within 100 pc is about . Sufficient chondrules could have been produced by this mechanism to account for the meteorites and cores of the giant planets and enough chondrules to completely account for the Earth and the inner planets provided the gas in the inner solar system was depleted by a factor 10. The probability of other planetary systems being similar to the solar system is about . A GRB in a nearby galaxy could be used to find protoplanetary disks by detecting the transient emission from chondrule formation. Chondrule layers could also be formed in molecular clouds that are near a GRB and have large precursor grains.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1999

Online publication: November 3, 1999
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