What does STEM stardust?
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) are gateway topics in the pursuit of understanding life. When broken down to our basic elements, the old saying comes to mind: we are made of stardust. Astronomers who study the origin of stardust reveal that stardust is created in the star’s death. And just as the cycle of life is on Earth, the same is true in the cosmos. Even in death life is the star, offering a new beginning in the solar winds. The creation of the most crucial and complex elements in the universe that are necessary for life only forge in the explosive death of a star.
“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded, and the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand….You are all stardust; you couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because all the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, and all the things that matter for evolution – weren’t created at the beginning of time, they were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way that they could get into your body was if the stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus – the stars died so that you could be here today.”
Lawrence M. Krauss
Star Deaths?
Astronomers have produced a highly detailed image of the Crab Nebula, by combining data from telescopes spanning nearly the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves seen by the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to the powerful X-ray glow as seen by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. And, in between that range of wavelengths, the Hubble Space Telescope’s crisp visible-light view, and the infrared perspective of the Spitzer Space Telescope. This composite image of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant, was assembled by combining data from five telescopes spanning nearly the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum: the Very Large Array, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, the XMM-Newton Observatory, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Credits: NASA, ESA, NRAO/AUI/NSF and G. Dubner (University of Buenos Aires) #nasagoddard #space #science
The leading minds in astronomy and related science show stardust is made of cosmic particles that are the remnants of a star’s explosion. Earth’s closest star – our Sun, is of the variety that typically burn for nine to ten billion years. The Suns estimated age is roughly four and a half billion years old. That means that our Sun is almost halfway through its life! But don’t worry, it still has about five billion years to go. To put FIVE BILLION YEARS into perspective – Humans are only about three hundred thousand years old. Even further back, the various related forms of Homo are only two million years old. The sun has time.
Star Births?
In the center of this image from the Hubble Space Telescope, partially obscured by a dark cloud of dust, a newborn star shoots twin jets out into space as a sort of birth announcement to the universe. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI
Formed by a collection of gas and dust, Stars are born in places called nebulae. Just like most of space, the nebula is mainly composed of the element hydrogen. Due to gravity hydrogen and the gas and dust begin to collapse, forming a nucleus. This is nuclear fusion, a course that can take millions of years to develop. In the core of a star, gravity produces high density and high temperature. The star nuclei increase its temperature transforming hydrogen atoms into helium atoms, the fuel that makes every star shine, through a multi-stage process… a star is born.
Elements originate in space?
Planets (like Earth), owe a portion of their building material to the abundance of actual stardust from exploding red giant stars. Elements scattered across the cosmos are vastly mixed today compared to the first stars in the universe. Those early stars would have been formed only with hydrogen and helium, that’s it.
The Hubble image of the Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635 is being formed by a proto-typical Wolf-Rayet star, BD +60º2522, an extremely bright, massive, and short-lived star that has lost most of its outer hydrogen and is now fusing helium into heavier elements. The star is about four million years old, and in 10 million to 20 million years, it will likely detonate as a supernova. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera-3 imaged the nebula in visible light with unprecedented clarity in February 2016. The colors correspond to blue for oxygen, green for hydrogen, and red for nitrogen. This information will help astronomers understand the geometry and dynamics of this complex system. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Gas on the the Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635 gets so hot that it escapes away into space as a “stellar wind” moving at over four million miles per hour. This outflow sweeps up the cold, interstellar gas in front of it, forming the outer edge of the bubble much like a snowplow piles up snow in front of it as it moves forward. As the surface of the bubble’s shell expands outward, it slams into dense regions of cold gas on one side of the bubble. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
INTERESTING FACT
Where do other elements come from?
All of the atoms in the universe began as hydrogen. It can take hundreds of billions of years for the hydrogen to react and transform into helium. Inside of the nuclei of a star is where this transformation happens. Stellar nucleosynthesis is the process by which elements are created within the stars nuclei by combining the protons and neutrons from the nuclei of lighter elements together. This is how the other elements are created. Fusion inside transforms hydrogen into helium, heat, and radiation. Heavier elements are created in different types of stars as they die or explode.
STEREO (Ahead) caught the action as one edge of a single active region spurted out more than a dozen surges of plasma in less than two days (Feb. 15-16, 2010). As seen in extreme UV light, the surges were narrow and directional outbursts driven by intense magnetic activity in the active region. While these kinds of outbursts have been observed numerous times, it was the frequency of so many surges in a short span of time that caught our attention. In this wavelength of UV light we are seeing singly ionized Helium at about 60,000 degrees C. Credit: NASA/GSFC/STEREO
Once all the hydrogen is consumed the star begins to die. It takes the explosion of a star five times bigger than our Sun to produce elemental stardust. A red giant star this big will contain enough energy via stellar nucleosynthesis to generate all of the elements, including iron. At this point when a red giant’s nucleus transforms into iron, it will begin to disintegrate, collapse in on itself creating a massive explosion known as a supernova. The light of the red giant supernova shines brighter than billions of stars put together for days, sometimes weeks. In the same explosion other elements such as gold, copper, mercury, and silver are created and float into space, forming a new nebula of true stardust.
How much of our bodies are stardust:
Stardust atoms are heavier elements, which makes the percentage of star mass in our body higher. The human body is roughly sixty percent water. Hydrogen accounts for only eleven percent of that water mass. Hydrogen is doubled but has much less mass compared to the each oxygen atom. That makes NINETY-THREE percent of the mass in our bodies made of stardust. Here’s to the stars!
