About 20 million years ago, in a not-so-distant galaxy, a large star exploded and sent elements representing the building blocks of life racing through space.
About a year ago, by chance, when the light it emitted reached Earth, a team of scientists in Israel observed it and, for the first time, collected data on the first stages of such an explosion, known as supernova .
The picture they are putting together offers a detailed look at the origins of crucial elements around us, like the calcium in our teeth and the iron in our blood.
“In effect, we are seeing the cosmic furnace in which heavy elements are formed, while they are being formed. We are watching this as it happens. This is truly a unique opportunity,” said Weizmann Institute of Science astrophysicist Avishay Gal-Yam.
The findings, published this Wednesday (27) in Nature magazinealso indicate that the giant star, located in a neighboring galaxy called Messier 101, likely left behind a Black Hole after exploding.
An amateur astronomer who was observing this galaxy accidentally alerted researchers that something appeared to be occurring. They quickly trained their ground-based telescopes on the star and began documenting the first stages of the explosion, which was named supernova 2023ixf .
The team, which included doctoral student and lead author of the study, Erez Zimmerman, contacted NASA (the United States space agency), which changed its schedule and directed the Hubble Space Telescope for the supernova. This allowed initial observation of the explosion's ultraviolet light, which is blocked by the atmosphere and undetected on Earth.
Along with tracking elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen launched into space, the ultraviolet data showed a discrepancy between the star's initial mass and the mass it ejected into space during the explosion.
“We suspect that after the explosion there was a black hole left behind – a newly formed black hole that wasn’t there before. It's the remnants of the explosion. Some of the star's mass collapsed to the center and created a new black hole,” said Gal-Yam.
Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape.
Having created a sort of fingerprint of the supernova from start to finish, Gal-Yam said it could help scientists identify imminent supernovae elsewhere.
“Maybe we might be able, in the next few years, to say, not for all stars, but maybe for some of them, this star we think, we suspect, is going to explode,” Gal-Yam added. “That will be fantastic, and then we will know how to be there and ready.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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