Brushing your teeth with the remains of dead stars

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
While it may not have an out-of-this-world taste, the toothpaste that helps keep our molars and bicuspids healthy does contain an element that was likely originally formed billions of years in long-dead stars similar to our sun, according to a new study.
As researchers from Sweden’s Lund University and colleagues from the US and Ireland reported in a recent edition of The Astrophysical Journal, the element fluorine (which, through gaining an electron, becomes fluoride) is found in products such as toothpaste and chewing gum, but its origins have long been somewhat of a mystery.
There have been three preeminent theories about how the chemical element was created, and the findings of the new study support the one which claims that it was formed in giant red stars at the end of their life cycles. Our sun and planets were made from materials from these dead stars, and likewise, the fluorine in our toothpaste might have been created from the sun’s ancestors.
According to Mashable, astronomers are able to determine a star’s chemical makeup by examining the light it emits through a process known as spectroscopy. Different elements absorb wavelengths of light and appear as unique markers on a spectrum. The authors of the new study used a telescope in Hawaii and a new instrument capable of analyzing infrared in order to spot the fluorine-producing stars, the website added.
Nils Ryde, an astronomy lecturer from Lund University, doctoral student Henrik Jönsson and scientists from Trinity College, the University of California, Davis and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Arizona analyzed stars formed at different points in the history of the universe to see if their fluorine content correlated with predictions of their theory.
“Different chemical elements are formed at high pressure and temperature inside a star,” Lund University said in a statement. “Fluorine is formed towards the end of the star’s life, when it has expanded to become what is known as a red giant. The fluorine then moves to the outer parts of the star. After that, the star casts off the outer parts and forms a planetary nebula.”
Fluorine that is ejected as a part of this process mixes with other gases surrounding the stars in what is known as the interstellar medium, the university added. New planets and stars are then formed in the interstellar medium, and when those new stars die, it is once again enriched.
While other astronomers believe that the chemical element might originate from stellar winds or supernova explosions, Ryde’s team indicates that it is red giants that are the primary suppliers of the substance. However, the researchers plan to study other types of stars to see if fluorine might have been produced prior to the formation of red giants, during the earliest stages of the universe.
They also plan to use the same technique to study other types of environments, including those the close to the supermassive black hole located at the center of the Milky Way. There, the cycle of old stars dying and new ones forming happens far more quickly than it does around the sun, they explained, and by monitoring the fluorine levels in the stars there, Ryde said that they can determine whether or not the processes that form it are different in any way.
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