"Star of the Big Bang": a mysterious object that may be in our galaxy

"If we understand correctly, there may be stars with low mass having a composition exclusively from the Big Bang," says astrophysicist Kevin Shlaufman of Johns Hopkins University. "Although we did not find such an object in our galaxy, it can exist." Recently it was reported that astronomers have discovered one of the oldest stars in the Universe, whose body is almost entirely composed of material erupted during the Big Bang.

The discovery of this star the age of nearly 13, 5 billion years means that there may be other stars with low mass and low metal content, relics of the Big Bang - possibly the very first stars in the Universe were such.

The newly discovered star is quite unusual, because unlike other stars with extremely low metal content, this part of the part of the "thin-disk" of the Milky Way - part of our galaxy, which is our sun. And since this star is so old, the scientists believe that our galactic neighbors may be at least 3 billion older than previously thought. Conclusions of scientists have been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The Star - Child of the Big Bang

"This star, possibly one of 10 million," said lead author Shlaufman, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. "This tells us something very important about the first generation of stars."

The first stars after the Big Bang the universe consisted entirely of elements such as hydrogen, helium and a little lithium. Then the stars generated elements heavier than helium in their cores, and filled their universe exploded as supernovas. The next generation of stars formed from clouds of material, dotted with these metals, and included them in its membership. metal content, or metallicity stars in the universe has increased with the repetition of the cycle of birth and death of stars.

Extremely low metallicity stars have recently discovered indicates that cosmic family tree can be only one generation separates us from the Big Bang. In fact, this new record-holder among the stars with the lowest content of heavy metal - it them as much as in the planet Mercury. For comparison, our Sun went through thousands of generations in the tree and has a heavy metal content equal to the content of the fourteen Jupiter.

Astronomers have discovered 30 ancient "ultralean metal" stars with an approximate mass of the sun. Star detected Shlaufmanom and his team has a mass of only 14% of the sun.

This star is part of a system of two stars orbiting around their common center. Astronomers have discovered that a tiny, almost invisible "minor" star after another group of astronomers discovered a bright "main" star. The team measured the composition of the main star by studying the optical spectrum of its light in high definition. The presence or absence of the dark bands in the spectrum of the star may identify items that are contained in it, such as carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, iron, and the rest. In this case, the star has an extremely low metallicity. Prior to this, the astronomers also found unusual behavior of this star system, which indicates the presence of a neutron star or a black hole. Shlaufman and his team have denied this, but in the process, discovered tiny companion and a bright star. The existence of a small companion turned out to be a great discovery. Shlaufmana team was able to bring him a lot of studying lung "wiggle" the star caused by the gravitational attraction of the younger stars.

Ever since the 1990's, scientists began to believe that in the earliest stages of the universe could be formed only massive stars - and they could not be observed because they burn their fuel quickly and died.

But for as astronomical simulations become more sophisticated, it became clear that, in certain situations, the star of this period, with a particularly low weight may still exist, even after more than 13 billion years since the Big Bang. In contrast to the massive stars, low-mass star can live for a very long time. It is believed that red dwarf stars can live for billions of years.

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