Scientists using Hawaii Island’s Subaru Telescope have detected a star that’s providing evidence to back up theories and simulations about the existence of very massive stars after the universe’s creation. Those very massive stars, known as first-generation stars, would likely have had a low metal content and lots of helium and hydrogen gases, Subaru Public Information Officer Suzanne Frayser said. Ideas about the first generational stars came about from questions about “what was the universe like after the Big Bang,” Frayser said. “There have been simulations but (until now), there’s nothing that supported the existence of very massive stars.” The simulations showed what chemicals would remain after the explosion of such a very massive star, leaving an unusual signature the astronomers and scientists then found in a low-mass star, labeled SDSS J0018-0939. The signature showed the low-mass star preserved the proportion of elements from the first generational star, the first observational evidence to back up the simulations about those first-generation stars. Specifically, the star had 300 times less iron than the sun, and was “significantly deficient” in lighter elements, such as carbon and magnesium, Subaru officials said. “The extremely low abundances of elements other than iron indicates that this star formed directly from a hydrogen gas cloud that contained elements dispersed by a first-generation massive star,” a news release said.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 01:00:00 +0000
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