This represents the first in what will be several major breakthroughs concerning the mystery surrounding lithium’s involvement in stellar phenomena, like novas.
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This image shows Nova Centauri 2013 (brightest star in the center) in July 2015. This is the first detection of the element ejected from a nova system to date. Once the dwarf star has absorbed enough hydrogen, a massive fusion reaction causes the white dwarf to burst.
Astronomers have very long theoretical which the latter portion of dilemma could be defined by novae expelling the aspect, “growing” house by having lithium and… In depth simulations of chemical enrichment of the galaxy demonstrated the novae were needed to explain the overabundance of lithium in young stellar populations.
As reported in a new study published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Luca Izzo, from Sapienza University of Rome and ICRANet, Pescara, Italy, and his team used the FEROS instrument on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, and the PUCHEROS spectrograph on the ESO 0.5-meter telescope at the Observatory of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile near Santiago, to zoom in on V1369 Centauri. Models along the Big Bang along at the universe was born 13.4 zillion in the past allow astronomers to effectively estimate quite precisely simply how much lithium ought to be prevalent.
“If we imagine the history of the chemical evolution of the Milky Way like a big puzzle, then the lithium novae was one of the most important pieces of the puzzle and disconcerting”, said Massimo Della Valle, co-author of the study. While the total amount of lithium that came out of the nova is relatively small, it explains why the element has appeared unaccounted for in the universe. 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.
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The discovery of lithium being expelled at some 2 million kilometers (1.24 million miles) per hour in Nova Centauri could, when extrapolated to the billions of other novae that have exploded in the Milky Way’s history, explain the unexpectedly large amount of lithium in our galaxy, the ESO said.
