Africa-Press – Sierra-Leone. A new study may help scientists gain insight into how matter in the universe evolved over time. Using the 8.1-meter Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, astronomers have managed to locate the remains of what might have been one of the first stars to appear in the universe.
According to a press release by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, scientists analyzed “one of the most distant known quasars” and now postulate that the ratio of chemical elements they discovered could only be the result of a first-generation star exploding as a pair-instability supernova.
A pair-instability supernova is theorized to be a much more powerful version of a supernova explosion, none of which have been observed so far. They are believed to have occurred when a truly massive star with a mass between 150 and 250 times that of our Sun reaches the end of its life.
If the astronomers’ hypothesis is correct and the object of their research is indeed a remnant of a pair-instability supernova, their discovery could shed further light on how the matter in the universe evolved over time, the press release pointed out. Also, astronomers might be able to discover more signatures of other pair-instability supernovas “still imprinted on objects in our local Universe.”
“We now know what to look for; we have a pathway,” said another author of the new study, astronomer Timothy Beers of the University of Notre Dame. “If this happened locally in the very early Universe, which it should have done, then we would expect to find evidence for it.”
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