Friday, December 9, 2011

Unexpectedly Heavy Stars from Long Ago Puzzle Astronomers

Unexpectedly Heavy Stars from Long Ago Puzzle Astronomers

Ancient stars found in a outdoor reaches of a Milky Way are surprisingly chock full of some of a heaviest chemical elements, that could have shaped in a galaxy's early history, a new examine reveals.

When astronomers found abnormally like gold, bullion and uranium in some of a oldest stars in a Milky Way they were puzzled, since an contentment of really complicated metals is typically usually seen in most after generations of stars.

To examine this mystery, researchers celebrated these ancient stars over a march of several years regulating a European Southern Observatory's swift of telescopes in Chile. They lerned their telescopes on 17 "abnormal" stars in a Milky Way that were found to be abounding in a heaviest chemical elements.

The formula of a examine are minute in a Nov. 14 emanate of a Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"In a outdoor tools of a Milky Way there are aged 'stellar fossils' from a possess galaxy's childhood," a study's lead author Terese Hansen, an astrophysicist during a Niels Bohr Institute during a University of Copenhagen, pronounced in a statement. "These aged stars distortion in a halo above and next a galaxy's prosaic disc. In a tiny commission â€" approximately 1-to-2 percent of these obsolete stars â€" we find aberrant quantities of a heaviest elements relations to iron and other 'normal' heavy elements." []

Hansen and her colleagues distributed a orbital motions of a stars, that led to an critical idea about what kind of mechanisms contingency have combined a complicated elements in a stars.

According to a researchers, there are dual probable theories to explain these ancient stars, both centered around , when large stars run out of fuel and fall in enterprising bursts.

Shortly after a star was created, it was dominated by light elements like hydrogen and helium. As clouds of these gasses clumped together and collapsed in on themselves underneath their possess gravity, a .

At a heart of these stars, hydrogen and helium joined together and shaped a initial complicated elements like carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.

When these large stars died in supernova explosions, they widespread a newly shaped elements as gas clouds into space. These gas clouds eventually collapsed in on themselves again to form new stars containing a heavier elements. Throughout this process, a newer generations of stars turn richer and richer in complicated elements.

After a few hundred million years, all of a famous chemical elements existed. But a really early stars contained usually a thousandth of a volume of complicated elements that are seen in a object and other stars today. Hansen and her colleagues advise that some early stars might have been in tighten binary systems. In such a twin star system, when one star went supernova, it would have coated a messenger star with a skinny covering of complicated elementslike bullion and uranium.

"My observations of a motions of a stars showed that a infancy of a 17 heavy-element-rich stars are in fact single," Hansen said. "Only 3 go to â€" this is totally normal, 20 percent of all stars go to binary star systems. So a speculation of a gold-plated adjacent star can't be a ubiquitous explanation."

Another speculation is that early supernovas could fire jets of these elements in opposite directions, dispersing them into a surrounding clouds of gas that eventually shaped some of a stars we see currently in a Milky Way.This unfolding could assistance explain how many of a aged stars became abnormally abounding in complicated elements, a researchers said.

"In a supernova blast a complicated elements like gold, bullion and uranium are shaped and when a jets strike a surrounding gas clouds, they will be enriched with a elements and form stars that are impossibly abounding in complicated elements," Hansen said.

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News referensi http://news.yahoo.com/unexpectedly-heavy-stars-long-ago-puzzle-astronomers-165802796.html

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