system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is our solar system self sufficient?

In a hypothetical universe where our solar system was the only thing that happened to form would everything turn out the same?
gpt
*After it formed*, yes, our Solar System is pretty much independent of the rest of the galaxy

But the formation of our Solar System depended on a lot of influence from many sources, with a lot of interaction. Our Solar System formed from the fragmentation and collapse of a molecular cloud, but these clouds are massive and actually collapse into a number of stars, forming a loosely bound "open" star cluster. The biggest brightest stars blow away the remaining gas with their intense light and winds, and then quickly go supernova. With the free gas, the cluster then doesn't have enough mass to be bound together by gravity, and the stars drift apart, until they're across the galaxy from each other. If the solar system formed by itself, it would have to be through a completely different mechanism.

And this molecular cloud has also been polluted by generations of stellar winds and supernovae, which have spread heavy elements throughout the gas in the galaxy. Without this history of billions of years of stars living and dying and expelling their gas into the galaxy, the chemical makeup of the Solar System would be totally different - we wouldn't have rocky planets for a start!

Additionally, supernovae have a role in both triggering and preventing star formation. Basically, they stir up the nearby gas. This can dissipate and blow away the gas, or because the shockwave made some bits a bit denser, it can cause a runaway gravitational collapse. Looking at the elements of our solar system, it looks like we were polluted by a nearby supernova really close to around the time our Sun formed, which makes us suspect that maybe this supernova triggered the collapse of the molecular cloud that formed our Sun.

But after all that is done and the Solar System is formed, there's very little interaction with other stars, or with the remaining interstellar gas in the galaxy. The Sun's wind does impact the interstellar gas and make a little bubble, but all this gas is so thin it doesn't affect very much - we're far more dominated by the Sun's light and wind than anything else. We do get some light and cosmic rays from other stars, but not a great deal. Anything like a supernova would have to be really close to directly affect us. In general, stars evolve by themselves, independent of their environment. This is actually a convenient feature that makes stars easier to understand, because a star's entire life can be predicted just from its initial mass and how much heavy elements it starts with.