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Scientists have identified one of the oldest known star outside theMilky Way . The breakthrough , reported in March in the journalNature Astronomy , has uncovered a relic from the early day of the existence in theLarge Magellanic Cloud(LMC ) , a orbiter galaxy of the Milky Way — and it ’s revealing the condition from a time before thesuneven survive .
The first stars bear after theBig Banglived and died billions of years ago , so there are none left to tell the story of the other universe . But traces of these starring ancestors were preserved in the 2nd propagation of star topology that take form and still survive today .
A telescope image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy orbiting the Milky Way that contains clues to the early composition of the universe.
The out layers of these ancient stars " keep up the chemical composition of their natal gasoline swarm , " and therefore bring out the piece of music of the first generation of wizard that seeded those clouds with fresh chemicals , study lead authorAnirudh Chiti , an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago , told Live Science in an email . The composition of these stars offers a window into the other production of elements when the adept form 1000000000 of years ago , Chiti said .
Hunting stellar relics
The early star blaze out to life billions of year ago , before long after the Big Bang . They were behemoths made from the only element that exist in copiousness at the time : about three - fourths hydrogen and one - fourth helium . Those giants quickly burn through theirnuclear fuel , exuviate their outer layers and then exploding as supernova and contaminate their stellar neighborhood with new , heavier elements forged within their cores .
This starring ash tree entered the admixture when a second generation of stars was born from the gas cloud enriched by the first . This cycle preserve , building ever - heavier elements and evenseeding the cosmos with the building blocks for life . This is the germ of the oxygen we respire , the calcium in our bones , and the iron in our ancestry cells .
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A James Webb Space Telescope image of the 30 Doradus nebula, a turbulent star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
By measuring the amounts of these factor in a star topology , stargazer can estimate its historic period . The less " ash " that has accumulated , the Old the star must be , while immature stars have build up up a mickle of elements from many earlier generations .
None of the first - generation stars has ever been observed , but astronomers havespotted some ancient starsof the second coevals in our beetleweed . These fossils are very rarified . Fewer than 1 in 100,000 stars in our galaxy is from that second multiplication . " You really are fishing needle out of haystacks , " Chiti said ina instruction .
From these relic , astronomers have take a draw about the early experimental condition in our coltsfoot . Now , they need to realize if theMilky Wayis typical or if those conditions were unlike in other galaxies .
An illustration of the Gaia spacecraft as it makes its observations.
To answer this question , the study authors turned their visual modality to one of our near astronomic neighbor , the LMC . seeable to the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere , the LMC is pocket-sized than the whitish Way and destined to blend with it in about 2.4 billion twelvemonth .
" The LMC is notable because it is nearly a major galaxy in its own right " and was only late caught in the clout of the Milky Way , Chiti said .
The team search for old star in the LMC in data accumulate by theEuropean Space Agency ’s Gaia space telescope . They pursue up using the 6.5 - metre Magellan telescope in Chile and identified 10 stars with about 100 clock time less iron than other LMC stars contain , have in mind they were very ancient .
One stood out . know as LMC-119 , it had less of this cosmic defilement than any known headliner outside our coltsfoot . This suggest it spring from gas enriched by just one supernova and was a sure sign that LMC-119 is a 2d - genesis star and very ancient .
" I ’d say LMC-119 is very likely at least about 13 billion age one-time , " Chiti told Live Science . ( For comparison , the universe itself is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old . )
Today , the LMC is about 160,000 scant - years off , but the authors estimated that it was about 6 million light - years removed when its earliest stars formed . " This isolates the early LMC from ejecta from the first hotshot that form in the early whitish Way , " they said in the paper . This means that the LMC ’s ancient stars can say stargazer about baby term in another galax .
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Interestingly , LMC-119 has much less atomic number 6 than ancient lead in our galaxy do . This hints at a previously unknown difference in how heavier constituent built up in these two galaxies and suggest the surroundings in our untested coltsfoot was likely unlike from that of the LMC .
" It ’s really exciting to be opening up stellar archeology of the Large Magellanic Cloud , and to be able to map out in such detail how the first stars chemically enrich the universe in different neighborhood , " said Chiti , who believe there are many more of these ancient stars waiting to be receive in the LMC .
Chiti is now contribute a new program to shoot one - after part of the southern sky using the Blanco 4 thou telescope in Chile and equipment design to identify the most ancient fossil genius in the Milky Way and our galactic neighbour . By uncovering these relic , astronomers trust to paint a adept painting of how ace have enriched the cosmos with the elements that make up all that we see around us .
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