Dusty old supernova could show off answer to life

For a long time astronomers had supernova explosions suspected, but was still missing observations, which will definitely prove this. Using ALMA was now a large amount of dust detected in the remnant of the supernova 1987A - and the place of origin.

Cosmic dust, which is usually made of silicon and graphite grains in galaxies everywhere - especially in the galaxies in the early universe . The source of the dust , astronomers have here especially supernova explosions suspected that represent the end of the life of a massive star .

So far, however, it was not able to support this theory by corresponding observations. Although dust was discovered in young supernova remnants , but acted this is often relatively small amounts that could hardly explain the dust content in some galaxies.

New observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array ( ALMA) , a composite of many radio telescopes in Chile's Atacama desert , have now provided additional evidence that supernova dust can actually produce in large enough quantities .

"We have a remarkably large mass of dust in the central region of the material found , which was hurled into space from a relatively young and nearby supernova ," said Remy Indebetouw the National Radio Astronomy Observatory ( NRAO ) and the University of Virginia in the U.S. Charlottesville. "It's the first time that we can actually see the point of dust production , which is very important for understanding the evolution of galaxies . "

The aim of the observations of astronomers was the supernova 1987A , which exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud could be followed in 1987. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way and about 160,000 light-years away from Earth. Supernova 1987A is the closest we observed in the period of modern astronomy supernova. Only Johannes Kepler had observed an even closer supernova in 1604 . She was even in our own Milky Way.

Bu Haber için yorum yapabilirsiniz 10.01.2014 10:51:47 204.236.235.245

Yorumlar()