Stars have minerals from an exploded hypernova.
By Dileep Thekkethil
A team of Astronomers at The Australian National University claim that they have found oldest of the stars that are more than 13 billion Years old in the centre of the Milky Way, which have minerals from a dead star that exploded in an enormous hypernova activity.
A hypernova is a type of star explosion which generates energy higher than that created during a supernovae explosion. Hypernova is also called a “superluminous supernova”. Such explosions are believed to be the origin of long-duration gamma-ray bursts.
According to Louise Howes from The Australian National University who is the lead author of the study, the Nine newly discovered stars are “among the oldest surviving stars in the Universe, and certainly the oldest stars we have ever seen.”
He also added that the birth of these stars dates back even before the formation of Milky Way which means the whole galaxy was formed around these stars.
The discovery of the pure stars has opened new avenues in studying the early environment of the universe and also challenges the current theories of star and Milky Way formation.
“The stars have surprisingly low levels of carbon, iron and other heavy elements, which suggests the first stars might not have exploded as normal supernovae,” Howes noted.
“Perhaps they ended their lives as hypernovae – poorly understood explosions of probably rapidly rotating stars producing 10 times as much energy as normal supernovae,” Howes said.
According to experts, spotting such pure stars among other millions of stars in like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Martin Asplund, from ANU explained “The ANU SkyMapper telescope has a unique ability to detect the distinct colours of anaemic stars – stars with little iron – which has been vital for this search.”
The team had discovered an extremely old star on the edge of the Milky Way back in 2014. Since then they were on the lookout for even older stars that had every possibility of being in the centre of the Milky Way.
The astronomers skipped through over five million stars through the SkyMapper before selecting the purest and the oldest of them from in the Milky Way. These stars were later analysed through the Anglo-Australian Telescope stationed at Coonabarabran in New South Wales and using Magellan telescope in Chile to understand the chemical make-up.
The report about the discovery of the oldest stars appeared in the journal Nature.
4 Comments
science fiction v/s science fact..theory is a lie told to stupid people.
The oldest star known is almost as old as the universe itself. It is said to be 13.8 billion years old and also in the center of this galaxy.Fascinating stuff.
This is a very interesting article, but it needs a grammar check. I blame the editors.
2nd to last paragragh has two grammar mistakes.