Latest Metallicity Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The universe has had traces of heavy elements such as carbon and oxygen as far back in time as astronomers have been able to see. Elements such as these were originally churned from the explosion of massive stars. They formed the building blocks for planetary bodies, and eventually for life on Earth. Peering back far in time, a research team from MIT, Caltech, and the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) found matter...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An international team, including Raymond Carlberg of the University of Toronto's Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, has discovered the most-distant, super-luminous supernovae observed to date. The violent stellar explosions which caused these supernovae would have occurred soon after the Big Bang when the universe was much younger. "The objects are both unusually bright and unusually slow to fade. These are properties that...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The brightest stars in the universe apparently do not like to live alone, according to a new study using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). Nearly three-quarters of the brightest, high mass stars are found to have a close companion star, which is far more than previous thought. Most of these pairs of stars are also experiencing disruptive interactions, like mass transfer from one star to the other. Another third of them are expected...
Astronomers have puzzled over why some puny, extremely faint dwarf galaxies spotted in our Milky Way galaxy's back yard contain so few stars. These ghost-like galaxies are thought to be some of the tiniest, oldest, and most pristine galaxies in the universe. They have been discovered over the past decade by astronomers using automated computer techniques to search through the images of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. But astronomers needed NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to help solve the...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com [ Watch the Video ] New observations show that small planets may be more widespread in our galaxy than previously thought. Lars A. Buchhave, an astrophysicist at the Niels Bohr Institute and the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at the University of Copenhagen, and colleagues studied the composition of over 150 stars harboring 226 planet candidates smaller than Neptune for the research. Scientists previously thought that the formation of small...
Building a terrestrial planet requires raw materials that weren't available in the early history of the universe. The Big Bang filled space with hydrogen and helium. Chemical elements like silicon and oxygen - key components of rocks - had to be cooked up over time by stars. But how long did that take? How many of such heavy elements do you need to form planets? Previous studies have shown that Jupiter-sized gas giants tend to form around stars containing more heavy elements than the Sun....
WASHINGTON, June 13, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The formation of small worlds like Earth previously was thought to occur mostly around stars rich in heavy elements such as iron and silicon. However, new ground-based observations, combined with data collected by NASA's Kepler space telescope, shows small planets form around stars with a wide range of heavy element content and suggests they may be widespread in our galaxy. (Logo:...
Unfortunately, stars don't have birth certificates. So, astronomers have a tough time figuring out their ages. Knowing a star's age is critical for understanding how our Milky Way galaxy built itself up over billions of years from smaller galaxies. Jason Kalirai of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University's Center for Astrophysical Sciences, both in Baltimore, Md., has found the next best thing to a star's birth certificate. Using a new technique, Kalirai...
[ Watch the Video ] Baby galaxies from the young Universe more than 12 billion years ago evolved faster than previously thought, shows new research from the Niels Bohr Institute. This means that already in the early history of the Universe, there was potential for planet formation and life. The research results have been published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters. For several thousand years after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago,...
Researchers working at the University of Bonn in Germany have used computer simulations to discover the first evidence that the way in which stars form depends upon the conditions of their birth environments, claims a new study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In a Friday statement, the Society said that the properties of stars, which are believed to form in interstellar space from gas and dust clouds, are dependent upon the surrounding conditions...
