2023-06-11 03:07:29
Photo: CCTV News
Chinese researchers have succeeded in proving the existence of the very massive first-generation stars, which are the oldest stars in the universe. After years of work, they discovered the chemical signature of these stars for the first time, a major breakthrough in understanding the origins and evolution of stars.
The research results were published online in the international scientific journal Nature on Wednesday, providing an answer to the scientific community’s long-standing question about the existence of very massive first-generation stars during the early stages of the planet. universe, about 13.8 billion years ago. .
Researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of China have analyzed more than 5 million stellar spectra obtained from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) in north China’s Hebei province. Through this analysis, they identified a star located in the halo of the Milky Way, about 3,327 light-years from Earth, with a mass about half that of the Sun.
This star exhibited a metal-poor characteristic, indicating its alignment with the characteristics of second-generation stars formed after the first-generation stars disappeared.
The first-generation stars were supermassive stars with masses ranging from 140 to 260 times that of the Sun, making them the oldest stars in the universe. These stars existed more than 13 billion years ago but had a short lifespan of only 3 million years before suffering supernova explosions, giving rise to the second-generation stars observed by the researchers.
By observing and studying the second-generation star, researchers will be able to infer the mass and characteristics of its previous generation of stars, said Xing Qianfan, assistant researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of China.
Xing said the research team will use the massive LAMOST dataset to infer the distribution of stars of different masses in early first-generation stars. This will allow them to explore the evolutionary history of the entire universe and the evolution of stars.
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