Supernova Reveals Origins of Universe's Dust
Jul 9, 2014 |By Ron Cowen and Nature magazine
Cosmic dust is crucial to the birth of stars and rocky planets, and provides the elemental ingredients for life. But its origin is obscure. Many astrophysicists think that dust is forged during the explosive supernova deaths of massive, short-lived stars, yet some observations of supernovas near our galaxy indicate that they produce too little material to account for the copious amounts of dust present in the young Universe.
In Nature today, astronomers lift the veil on the mystery, documenting the formation of dust in a supernova from just a few weeks after the explosion to almost 2.5 years after it. The study reveals the formation of oversized dust grains that were able to withstand the shocks of the exploding star. It also shows that dust production was slow at first, but later sped up.
Most previous studies looked at each supernova for short periods of time, so “they did not tell us the full story of how much dust supernovas produce”, says co-author Christa Gall, an astrophysicist at Aarhus University in Denmark. She and her colleagues monitored the supernova SN 2010jl, first spotted in a nearby galaxy in 2010.
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/supernova-reveals-origins-of-universe-s-dust/
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