Scientists Discover Early Stars Created Elements Heavier Than Ever Found on Earth
A team of astronomers led by Ian Roederer of the University of Michigan has uncovered a groundbreaking finding about the stars at the very dawn of time. According to their new research, these ancient stars were capable of creating elements far heavier than anything that has ever been found naturally occurring on Earth, or anywhere else in the wider Universe.
After examining 42 stars in the Milky Way, the team concluded that the chemical abundances of these stars can only be explained by the previous production of elements with atomic masses greater than 260. Most of the elements in the Universe, heavier than hydrogen, have been created by stars through the process of fusion.
The heaviest element that stars can produce through fusion is iron. The fusion of iron into heavier elements requires a large amount of energy, and at that point, the star self-destructs. However, stars also produce elements through supernova explosions and kilonova explosions where two neutron stars collide.
This process, known as the rapid neutron-capture process or r-process, creates elements such as gold, platinum, thorium, and uranium. However, there is still much that scientists do not know about how elements are created.
Roederer explained, “We don’t have a good sense of how many different kinds of sites in the Universe can generate the r-process, we don’t know how the r-process ends, and we can’t answer questions like, how many neutrons can you add? Or, how heavy can an element be?”
To further investigate the origins of these heavy elements, Roederer’s team studied the chemical compositions of the 42 stars and found a pattern indicating the presence of elements that were produced by fission. This suggests that the early stars from which these metals came must have produced elements far heavier than an atomic mass of 260, which subsequently split to form lighter, more stable elements.
The implications of this discovery are significant, as it challenges previous understandings of the formation of heavy elements in the early Universe. “We’ve never observed those elements naturally occurring anywhere. We’ve seen them in the lab, but their half-lives are so short that they decay almost immediately,” Roederer stated.
This research has been published in Science, providing valuable insight into how the rich diversity of elements in the Universe came to be. The study opens up new opportunities for understanding the processes that shaped the chemical composition of the Universe from its very beginnings, and the findings could have far-reaching implications in the field of astrophysics.