When a massive star, outclassing our own sun by fiat, grows old enough that it’s run out of fuel, it sometimes explodes in a violent reaction releasing the elements necessary for new stars, new planets and systems into the depths of space in a matter of minutes. This process is believed to resemble the big bang itself, and astronomers have just discovered the presence of a chemical called lithium in a nova — a white dwarf suddenly brightening from a local nuclear explosion — and this chemical’s presence is helping us understand the concentration of lithium in stellar phenomena.
NOVA OBSERVED IN CHILE
The nova was observed from two telescopes run by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) resting on the rolling mountains of Chile, and quickly pinpointed and identified as Nova Centauri, a new member to the nova club, having exploded in 2013. Nova Centauri is the brightest nova yet, in the 21st century.
NOVA CENTAURI TESTED POSITIVE
This represents the first in what will be several major breakthroughs concerning the mystery surrounding lithium’s involvement in stellar phenomena, like novas. As an alternative, astronomers have used models of the Big Bang, the name for the cataclysmic birth of our universe 13.8 billion years ago, to calculate how much lithium ought to persist in stars.
The model suggests that while younger stars are abundant in lithium, older ones’ lithium content is depleted.
NOVAE AND THEIR LITHIUM DISCREPANCY
However, astronomers have for a good deal of time wondered if the question of younger stars’ higher lithium content could be caused by older stars’ lithium content being expelled at wild speeds, “seeding” stellar nurseries with lithium, giving baby stars the material before they are fully formed.
But up until now, there has been no evidence whatsoever of lithium in novae–super or nominal.
PREDILECTION FOR PROGRESS
This change took the form of lithium being ejected from the exploding Nova Centauri at 1.24 million miles (2 million kilometers) per hour. If the nova’s peculiar qualities are extrapolated to the billions of other novae whom have seen the face of death throughout the history of our Milky Way, we may finally be able to explain the presence of lithium in the Milky Way.
“If we imagine the history of the chemical evolution of the Milky Way as a big jigsaw, then lithium from novae was one of the most important and puzzling missing pieces,” commented Massimo Della Valle, who co-authored the study.
The discrepancy between the known abundance of lithium necessarily present near the beginning of the Big Bang, and the relatively impoverished older stars might be explained and finally accounted for by the ESO’s findings, thanks to Nova Centauri’s rich death.
