Help me understand

"DW" == David Woolley writes:

DW In article ryuVd.38926$uc.26673@trnddc01,
DW "davon96720" wrote:

Stars are always forming, I believe SOL is like a sixth generation
star.

We don't really distinguish generations this finely. It's more
generally done as first (Population III), early (Pop II), and later
(Pop I). The Sun is a Pop I star.

DW Stars are also dying and those that die as supernovae dump large
DW amounts of relatively heavy elements, from the end stages of their
DW nuclear fuel burning, into the material from which new stars form.
DW Thus, each new generation of stars has more heavy elements (a
DW higher "metallicity").

That's what should happen. Unfortunately, the data don't agree.
There's an issue known as the G dwarf problem. One might expect a
large range of metallicities in stars like the Sun. After all,
there's been 5 billion years of star formation since the Sun formed
and the Milky Way Galaxy has rotated about 20 times, which should be
enough to mix the gas. Yet there isn't a large range of
metallicities.

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