a galaxy far far away may hold the key to life on earth
Last Updated : GMT 06:49:16
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Last Updated : GMT 06:49:16
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A galaxy far, far away may hold the key to life on earth

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Arab Today, arab today A galaxy far, far away may hold the key to life on earth

New York - Arabstoday

For the past few weeks, astronomers have been monitoring events in a galaxy so far away its light took more than 20 million years to reach us. Their interest was sparked by a supernova explosion so violent that even at such a vast distance it could be seen from Earth with binoculars. As it fades back into obscurity, astronomers are racing to find clues that might explain the driving force of these awesome events. On the face of it, such research sounds utterly irrelevant to the human condition. Yet paradoxically our connection to supernovas could hardly be more intimate. Everything around us - including our very skin and bones - is made of atoms created inside these cosmic furnaces. Not even the Big Bang itself was capable of such a feat: it expanded and cooled too fast to make much beyond atoms of hydrogen and helium. All of the other chemical elements were made in the death throes of massive stars. Understanding supernovas is thus central to understanding our own origins because we really are quite literally, to coin a hippie phrase, made of stardust. Reaching that understanding has proved extraordinarily difficult. Despite millennia of observations and more than half a century of intense theoretical effort, exactly what lies behind the violence of supernovas remains a mystery. They come in various forms but in broad terms all have their roots in a star that gets too big for its own good. Most are the death throes of huge old stars that run out of fuel and collapse, causing an explosive rise in temperature. Others - such as the event code-named PTF 11kly now being studied - are thought to be the result of one old star cannibalising its companion, gorging itself to the point that it collapses in on itself, triggering an explosion. The resulting violence is bested only by the Big Bang itself. Many supernovas briefly outshine all the stars in their host galaxies, their cores reaching temperatures in excess of 10 billion°C. It is under these apocalyptic conditions that the supernovas forge their gift to the universe, in the form of the chemical elements such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen that make up everything around us, including ourselves. The nuclear reactions needed to pull off this cosmic conjuring trick have been known for decades and are pretty well understood. So is the initial collapse. Put simply, as a star runs out of fuel or gains too much mass, the force of gravity makes it implode under its own weight. What baffles astronomers is exactly how the sudden collapse can turn into so violent an explosion. Part of the answer lies in the fact that while massive, the stars that go into supernova are not hefty enough to collapse forever to become black holes. As they collapse and their internal temperature and density soar, sub-atomic forces in their cores kick in, abruptly stopping the collapse. The shuddering stop releases a shock wave that tears up through the overlaying material, gathering up all the newly created atoms and spewing them into space. Or at least, that is what the shock wave should do. But as it races back up through the star, it must push through huge amounts of matter still plunging inward, slowing it down. And the problem is that calculations and supercomputer simulations show the shock wave lacks the energy needed to break out of the star. It stalls just a few hundred kilometres beneath the surface. Clearly, something is missing - some extra source of energy capable of tearing the star apart. Part of the answer is thought to lie with ghostly particles called neutrinos (the same particles currently at the centre of the faster-than-light controversy). Observations of supernovas have detected these pouring out of wreckage, having helped to boost the energy of the shock wave. Yet they don't seem quite up to the job. Now a team of researchers from the UK and Europe is claiming that events inside a supernova might have more in common with the Big Bang than merely mind-boggling temperatures. They suggest the explosions may also involve a form of energy thought to have triggered the birth of the cosmos itself.

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a galaxy far far away may hold the key to life on earth a galaxy far far away may hold the key to life on earth

 



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a galaxy far far away may hold the key to life on earth a galaxy far far away may hold the key to life on earth

 



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