Why Older Stars Have Unusually High Amounts of Heavy Elements

Some of the oldest stars in the Milky Way, in the outer reaches of our galaxy, contain abnormally high amounts of heavy elements like gold, platinum and uranium. Where these large amounts came from has been a mystery for researchers. Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have been studying these ancient stars for several years with giant telescopes in Chile in order to trace the origin of these heavy elements. With recent observations they have hypothesized how they could have been formed in the early history of the Milky Way.

Shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was dominated by mysterious dark matter, along with hydrogen and helium. As the dark matter and gases clumped together under their own gravity, they formed the first stars. In the scorching interior of these stars, hydrogen and helium melted together and formed the first heavier elements like carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, and after a few hundred million years, all of the known elements were in place. However, these early stars only contained a fraction of the heavy elements seen in stars today.

Every time a massive star burns out and dies in a supernova, it releases clouds of gas and newly formed elements out into space, where the gas clouds contract again and finally collapse and form new stars. As a result, new generations of stars have a larger ratio of heavy elements than the previous generation.

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