system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How did heavy metals arrive on Earth during planetary formation?

I understand that most heavy metals are created during supernovae and ejected during the explosion, but I'm not quite understanding as to how so much of anything metallic - especially elements higher in the periodic table - came to be part of the primordial dust cloud - a cloud composed of still so *very much* hydrogen that plenty of stars could form in our neighbourhood - that we have such a mix of elements here, and likely on any planet?
gpt
Our Sun is second (possibly third) generation, meaning that it was formed from the remains (stellar nebula) of previous supernovae. Earth and the other planets are little bits of the origin stellar disk the Sun formed from, and that's how we got a lot of our heavy elements. Presumably some came in the form of later bombardment as well.