Washington, May 21 (Reuters): The Sun burst into existence in a brilliant explosion of supernovas, rather than being born quietly from swirling dust and gases in a dark corner of the universe, US astronomers said yesterday.

The discovery of fingerprints left by certain rare forms of iron make it clear that the birth of our solar system was violent, the team at Arizona State University said.

“There are two different sorts of environment where low-mass stars like the Sun form,” astronomer Jeff Hester, who led the team, said in a statement.

“In one kind of star-forming environment, you have a fairly quiescent process in which an undisturbed molecular cloud slowly collapses, forming a star here, a star there. The other type of environment in which Sun-like stars form is radically different. These are more massive regions that form not only low-mass stars, but luminous high-mass stars, as well.” The higher the mass, the higher the energy.

Writing in the journal Science, Hester and his colleagues note several reports from scientists who have found the unmistakable fingerprints in meteorites of iron-60, an unstable isotope that can only be formed in the heart of a massive star.

This, they argue, suggests that when the Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, a massive star was nearby. “The implications of this are clear,” they wrote.

“Like most low-mass stars, the Sun formed in a high-mass star-forming region where one or more stars went supernova.”

A supernova occurs when a star reaches a certain point in its life cycle welling up into a huge fiery ball before eventually collapsing back and losing energy.