Today, these stars are found in the bulges and haloes of galaxies, and while they’re still considered metal-poor, they contain metal abundances much greater than the very early universe. The metals created inside these massive stars began to spread via supernovae, and as the metal content of the universe increased, Pop II stars began to form about 13 billion years ago. (As a note, astronomers typically refer to any elements heavier than helium as “metals,” regardless of their classification on the periodic table.) Pop III stars probably began developing about 100 million years after the Big Bang. This chemistry makes Pop III stars extremely metal-poor, if not devoid of metals altogether.
Population III (Pop III) stars theoretically contain only hydrogen, helium, and very little if any “heavier” elements, such as lithium. This detection, coupled with the age of A2744_YD4, helps astronomers to better pin down the life cycle - including the formation - of the universe’s first stars, called Population III stars. Based upon this rate, the group estimated that only about 200 million years were needed to form the dust seen in A2744_YD4.Īs a result, “we are witnessing this galaxy shortly after its formation,” according to co-author Richard Ellis of the European Southern Observatory and University College London.
WHAT IS STARDUST FULL
A2744_YD4 produces stars at a rate of 20 solar masses per year, which is a full 20 times the rate of our Milky Way’s comparatively paltry star formation rate of 1 solar mass per year. In the very early universe, however, this dust was scarce, simply because the process of its creation and dispersion via supernovae hadn’t had much time to complete.īut in A2744_YD4, this process has apparently had enough time to progress. This dust is an integral component of today’s stars (like our Sun) and the planets surrounding them.
Among the material blown away is dust, which is made up of elements such as aluminum, silicon, and carbon, and is spread across galaxies by these explosions. In the press release accompanying the announcement, Laporte explained that “the detection of so much dust indicates early supernovae must have already polluted this galaxy.” Supernovae are the end result of massive stars, which blow away much of their interiors explosively as they die. The detection of A2744_YD4 and its properties, which was made by an international team of astronomers led by Nicolas Laporte of University College London, is remarkable for several reasons.Ī2744_YD4 is full of dust. As neutral hydrogen throughout the universe was ionized, however, light could finally travel vast distances. Neutral hydrogen is opaque to short wavelengths of light, which means that it absorbs these wavelengths easily so the light cannot pass through. The Epoch of Reionization is when the universe’s first luminous sources - stars, quasars, and galaxies - turned on and ionized neutral hydrogen atoms (that is, knocked their electrons away). The cosmic microwave background was produced at a redshift of about 1,000.Ī2744_YD4’s cosmological “timestamp,” as given by its redshift, falls within the estimated age range for the Epoch of Reionization, which occurred somewhere around a redshift of 10, when the universe was about 400 million years old. It’s also important to note that redshift is not linear - redshifts of 0-1 are considered relatively nearby, while redshifts of 8-9 are some of the farthest objects we can currently see as we look back to the very early universe. In the very nearby universe, objects have a redshift of nearly zero high-redshift objects, such as A2744_YD4 with its redshift of 8.38, are extremely far away (the exact distance depends on the expansion history of the universe). Objects with a higher redshift are farther away, and thus we are looking at them as they appeared in the past. Redshift measures the amount by which a distant object’s light is stretched by the expansion of the universe. It sits at a redshift of 8.38, which is associated with a time when the universe was just 600 million years old. The galaxy is called A2744_YD4, and it’s the most distant galaxy ever found by ALMA. Using this ability, ALMA has identified dust and gas in a galaxy that formed when our universe was only about 4 percent of its current age. Able to image the sky in millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, ALMA can spot emission associated with molecular gas and dust, which are cold and can be difficult or impossible to see at other wavelengths. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the Chilean Andes has made several groundbreaking discoveries since it was brought online in 2011.
0 kommentar(er)
