Supernovae Key to Mystery Dust of the Universe

Yahoo! News ^ | 7/17/03 | Patricia Reaney - Reuters

[NormsRevenge]

LONDON (Reuters) -

Supernovae, powerful and violent explosions of stars at the end of their lives, hold the key to a 10 billion-year-old mystery -- the origins of cosmic dust, astronomers said Wednesday.

Scientists long believed that cosmic dust, the fine solid particles in space that are the building blocks of planets, was made in relatively cool, slow-burning normal stars and released in a stellar wind.

But astronomers in England and Wales say they have discovered that some supernovae spew out huge amounts of dust, suggesting they are the source of the first cosmic particles in the Universe.

"The origin of cosmic dust is, in fact, the basic question of the origin of our planet and others. Effectively, we live on a very large collection of cosmic dust grains and yet, until now, we have not been sure where cosmic dust is made," Dr Loretta Dunne, an astronomer at Cardiff University, said on Wednesday.

Dunne and colleagues at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh solved the mystery of cosmic dust -- which consists of particles about as small as those in cigarette smoke -- using a revolutionary camera called SCUBA which can detect sub-millimeter wavelengths.

"The dust actually shines at the submillimeter wavelength. You can make an image of it with this special camera and see it glowing," Dunne explained in an interview.

The team used SCUBA to look for dust in the remains of the supernova Cassiopeia A, which is 11,000 light years from the Earth. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles the distance light travels in a year.

Astronomers had suspected supernovae might produce cosmic dust, but until now had found only small amounts in them. However the remains of Cassiopeia A, the explosion of a star 30 times bigger than the Sun, showed plenty of cosmic dust.

"If all supernovae make the same amount of dust that we found in Cassiopeia A, supernovae are actually better at producing dust than stellar winds are in the galaxy," said Dunne, who reported the finding in the science journal Nature.

Because supernovae evolve more quickly than ordinary stars, they would have produced the first cosmic dust.

"The dust that we see at about 10 billion years or more ago in the past could only have come from supernovae," Dunne added.

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[RightWhale]

Scientists long believed that cosmic dust, the fine solid particles in space that are the building blocks of planets, was made in relatively cool, slow-burning normal stars and released in a stellar wind.

Scientists, if one can group them in such a collective, tend to not have such simplistic views of nature. The only common mechanism that we know of for creating the heavier elements is in supernova explosions. Lighter elements such as carbon would be created in late cycles of stellar evolution when the hydrogen has been consumed, and this material would be given off constantly, but many of the elements that make earth and possibly other planets attractive and useful for lifeforms are some of the heavier elements. So, it's novas and supernovas, has been for a long time.

[Zavien Doombringer]

God Ordered it..*Bang* it happened...

[PatrickHenry]

"Get your own dirt!" [This ping list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.]

[Aric2000]

I always liked Carl Sagan for his poetic ways of saying this.

We are all made of star stuff, at first there were just suns, then as those stars died they gave off heavier and heavier elements, that is what we are made from.

We are all star stuff....

[js1138]

Stardust remains one of my favorite songs. But not the hippy version from Woodstock.

[AdmSmith]

Perhaps I was sleeping during my classes some 20 years ago, but I never heard that Scientists long believed that cosmic dust, the fine solid particles in space that are the building blocks of planets, was made in relatively cool, slow-burning normal stars and released in a stellar wind.

Is this article really from 2003?

[AdmSmith]

Sorry, I should have marked slow-burning normal stars and released in a stellar wind.

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[Aracelis]

Stardust remains one of my favorite songs

Ah...mine too. It's comforting to know we are all stardust, and someday will return to blaze brightly in the heavens once again.

[js1138]

I believe Stardust was voted the best song of all time by some group. I heard the discussion some years ago on NPR, before I stopped listening to NPR. Anyway, I believe the melody sat on the composer's back burner for a number of years, and was dredged up by a friend who had heard an early version.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Or, "we are all stardust or nuclear waste, depending on how you look at it."

[RightWhale]

It's comforting to know we are all stardust, and someday will return to blaze brightly in the heavens once again

Scientifically speaking, you know, the dust we are made of is mostly combusted, burnt, fused, done, and will never glow again unless it happens to get in the way of an active star, and then will shine by reflected light only or possibly just block out the light. Now, if you want to talk about the other part of us that is not humdrum dust, that's different.

[RightWhale]

Stardust was voted the best song of all time

Best-known and most popular anyway.

[AndrewC]

Scientists, if one can group them in such a collective, tend to not have such simplistic views of nature.

It would seem so, but then this becomes a very strange statement from the author.

"... supernovae are actually better at producing dust than stellar winds are in the galaxy," said Dunne

[Young Werther]

Not a new hypothesis! Indeed it was 20 or more years ago that this was explained in Scientific American.

All heavy metals, (No! Not the bands!) are created when a sun goes Nova.

Thus we are Star Children since we are made of the material of stars!!!

[gcruse]

We are all star stuff....

We are the universe contemplating itself.