Introduction:
Imagine our Universe filled with a gigantic ocean of the tiniest particles – atoms which are invisible to the naked eye. Everything in the universe is made up of these basic building blocks right from a small grain of sand to the biggest star. These tiny particles too consist of a nucleus composed of smaller particles called protons and neutrons, with electrons orbiting around it.
When similar types of atoms (those atoms that consist of the same number of protons)-in a way come together, they produce elements; oxygen, carbon, iron, and so on. However, the manner by which all elements greater than iron (copper, nickel) were first formed has ever been a puzzle for scientists. However, now an exciting observation by the astrophysicists from Niels Bohr Institute gave new hope to explain this problem by neutron star collisions and their bright afterglows.
Astronomers analyze the light emitted by celestial bodies to learn about the universe’s composition. They accomplish this by a measurement technique known as ‘spectroscopy’. At Space India, through Space Explorers Workshop, “Fingerprints of the Universe”, students are taught to experiment rather than simply believing in facts. They experiment and discover that light is composed of seven colours. They next investigate how each spectrum conveys a story. It is specific to the object and can provide a variety of information about it. They examined the spectrums of various light sources, concluding that each spectrum is unique and a feature of the object’s underlying structure. They then compare this to how astronomers use spectroscopy to find incredible things about cosmic objects.
Birth of Neutron Stars and Rare Explosions
Stars have their own journey of being born, grow up and eventually reach their final stage of life cycle as every other living thing. At this stage when star run out of fuel and energy, they explode in a gigantic firework called as supernova explosion and what remains is neutron star. They are nearly entirely made up of tightly packed neutrons and rank as amongst the densest objects in the universe.
At times, the two neutron stars collide and release a tremendous amount of energy as they merge with each other and create heavy elements like gold and platinum. This is a relatively rare explosion called a kilonova, and all those newly produced elements drift out into space, enriching the galaxy and eventually forming later stars and planets.
For the first time, scientists can directly observe the temperature of elementary particles in the radioactive glow of a kilonova – specifically, after two neutron stars have merged and a black hole has been born. Researchers report microscopic insights into these cosmic events, offering a unique view of how such high-energy phenomena develop over time. In Pictures: Seeing the Birth of Heavy Elements.
A recently seen neutron-star collision is thought to be the creation of one of the smallest black holes ever seen and with it, a massive, hot ball of energy expanding at nearly the speed of light. In the following days, this remnant, known as a kilonova, was shining as brightly as hundreds of millions of Suns through radiation from the decay of newly formed, radioactive elements. Scientists tapped the world’s telescopes, from Australia and South Africa to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, to study the light from the kilonova, taking a giant leap in trying to understand the formation of elements heavier than iron.
Ripples of the Cosmos’ Early Years
In the short time after the collision of the neutron stars, the temperature was billions of degrees—thousands of times hotter than the sun’s core and similar to the temperature in the universe shortly after the Big Bang. Under such extreme conditions, electrons release from atomic nuclei and form an ionized plasma (fourth state of matter) in which particles can interact freely. Over minutes, hours, and days as the fireball cooled, it repeated the cooling phase after the Big Bang, which saw matter particles begin to come together into eventually stable atoms, and light travelling freely.
Observations of Specific Elements
There are several observations including heavy elements, in this study such as strontium and yttrium, that directly provide evidence of the formation of elements in the aftermath of the collision between the neutron stars. This data helps fill part of the long-standing puzzle over the origins of some of the universe’s heaviest elements. A PhD student at the Cosmic DAWN Centre, Rasmus Damgaard says, “We catch a glimpse of the moment when atomic nuclei and electrons bond in the afterglow, to witness the birth of atoms.” This observation gives an unparalleled view of atomic birth in extreme conditions, capturing a “time capsule” of the processes in play within one of the most energetic eruptions in the universe.
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