Indian astronomers have figure out a key puzzle of the universe, how elements became heavier than iron. As per the astronomers from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bengaluru, elements in the cosmos became heavier than iron by stealing from stars.
To understand the universe, its ingredients must be be understood first.
That’s why scientists and space enthusiasts alike are fascinate by chemical elements in space and how their characteristics came to be.
Heavier elements have taken a lot from carbon-rich stars.
It’s still not clear how elements heavier than iron came to be, but this discovery by Indian scientists may get us a step closer.
The team was led by Professor Aruna Goswami and support by doctoral students Meenakshi P. and Shejeelammal J. at IIA.
The study was publish as two papers in the Astrophysical Journal.
They analysed the surface chemical composition of several Carbon Enhanced Metal-Poor (CEMP) stars.
Most CEMP stars are abundant in heavy elements.
These CEMP stars are mostly dwarf stars, or sub-giant stars, or giant stars.
Think of it as an evolutionary stage for stars and none of them can produce elements that are heavier than iron.
Aruna Goswami Said in a statement shared by India’s Ministry of Science and Technology :
“At the evolutionary stages in which the stars exist, they are not expected to produce heavy elements. However, the surface chemical composition of these stars exhibits abundances of heavy elements that are about 100 to 1000 times higher than that of the Sun. So, we looked for the origin of the observed enhanced abundances of the heavy elements, deriving possible clues from the stellar surface chemical abundance signatures,”
The team use the Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) at the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle with help from the telescope at the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile, and the SUBARU telescope in Hawaii to capture spectra of stars.
By using elemental abundance ratios of elements like carbon, barium, strontium, etc, they found that that heavy elements in CEMP stars are produce by their low-mass companions in space in a phase called the Asymptotic Giant Breach (AGB).
Following this, these elements are move to the CEMP stars over time.
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