Stars in the universe names. Astronomers are finding stars that are older than the Universe. How is this possible
In our Galaxy - the Milky Way - there are several hundred billion stars different types, colors and calibers. Stars here are constantly formed from the Galaxy’s huge mineral reserves - oil and gas, that is, dust and gas, of course. Huge clouds drift in the galactic plane in a circle. They are crushed into sleeves by the gravity of the supermassive black hole at the core of the Galaxy. Whether a star explodes, a stellar association flies past a cloud, or tidal disturbances from some massive objects intervene, and - done! The cloud begins to shrink, shrink, the process accelerates over time, the atoms are already cramped, and the force inexorably continues to press and pull them towards the center, until the impacts of the atoms against each other cease to be elastic, and begin to tear off the electron shells, creating ions, and then, even cooler - hydrogen atoms will begin to fuse into helium, releasing energetic photons that carry energy into outer space.
The entire spiral rotates once every 50 million years. The oldest star in it is 13 billion years old, and the Milky Way itself is about 10 billion years old. Our sun is a star with planets circling around it. Astronomers believe that the Solar System and Earth originated from an exploding Mega Star.
At first there was a large cloud of gas and dust that rotated and the frictional noise and repulsion from the collision heated to such an extent that the particles of matter were disassembled and scattered, which over time and under the influence of gravity was formed on the planet. This is how planets and stars were born in time. Neutrons, which scientists call pulsars and variables, because they change the intensity of the light they emit.
Credit: Living Universe website
The dust cloud is suddenly pierced by a shock wave, throwing opposite directions streams of luminous material - Herbig's famous objects - Haro! Fierce rays will break through the dust, and the newborn star will begin its life. Its wind will eventually clear all the dust, all the light elements into space, leaving only larger stones, rocks and asteroids in orbit. For billions of years, this rocky chaos around the young star will jostle, swirl and gather dust until, finally, several planets with a solid surface form. Nodes of gas remaining within this dust can accumulate all the material within their reach, compacting and rotating. And here you are - a giant gas planet. The life of the new solar system has begun!
There are supernovae, they are formed when the fuel of a star begins to decline, until it is done, then in a star formation explosion there is an explosion that destroys everything nearby, and the rest can form a new star or planet. The distance from the Earth to the Sun is 150 million kilometers. At the center of this collection, everything nearby sinks into the center and disappears forever, and perhaps goes to another galaxy.
Our senses and brains can only cope with a limited range of reality. Open your imagination with illustrative videos and interactive tools. Every person is born with huge limitations that limit him in understanding and perceiving reality. Like other parts of the body, the brain is configurable Calculating machine can be "activated" and its relative productivity and imagination improved through gradual training and finding crutches.
Credit: Living Universe website
But what's next for these stars? To answer this question, tell me what mass you are talking about! Unlike people, the fate of stars can be predicted with a good degree of confidence based on one (okay, two) of its properties. The first is the mass, the second is, of course, its spectral class.
You can't explain "minus five apples" to a small child, but you're unlikely to be able to describe a four-dimensional sphere or cube to an adult. However, in this article we are looking at relatively well thought out things, including dimensions in our reality. It is impossible to go into detail, but even a little is better than trying to imagine yourself in an often unimaginable way.
Every ten seconds the video is ten times as far away, which gives a pretty good idea of how we not only ourselves, but our planet or even the solar system compares to the entire universe. In the second part of the video the direction is reversed and you can get into nanometer and even smaller sizes. Due to the production time of this video, the smallest dimensions are not available.
Credit: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/UC Berkeley/N.Smith et al.; IR: Lick/UC Berkeley/J.Bloom & C.Hansen
The most massive stars are blue supergiants, true megastars with masses between 140 and 280 solar masses, so hot inside (billions of degrees!) that the thermal energy inside begins to transform into electron-positron pairs, which violently annihilate in a process called “pair instability.” This is one of the most exotic cases in the part of the Universe we observe, since pair instability produces a supernova explosion of such force that it can be seen from the other end of the Universe, and after it there is practically nothing left - not a star, not a firebrand... So far we know about the existence of one such monster called SN 2006gy. It’s hard to imagine him, it’s scary to write about him...
Another video compares the size of stars, including our Sun. As you can see, for us the gigantic Sun, compared to the much larger stars in the visible universe, is quite titanic. If you wanted to surround this star, it would take you about eight hours to quickly get light. Light travels from the Earth to the Sun for only eight minutes. So much to imagine the size of this star.
We found another video on a similar topic. Imagination can be practiced just like any other activity. Creativity is based on different angles of looking at a problem and its solution. Even if you can't imagine a 4D sphere to begin with, don't despair. It takes time, and sometimes a crutch in the form of comparison with something similar, for example, on a different scale or dimension.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/GSFC/M.Corcoran et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI
Blue supergiants live for a short time, tens, or at most hundreds of millions of years. Good example such a star is Eta Carinae. They embody the principle - Live fast (and bright), die young! During their lives, they fry the entire space around them with harsh ultraviolet radiation, losing a huge amount of material, sparing neither themselves nor others. Their life, as a rule, ends in a catastrophe - a type II supernova explosion, illuminating the entire Galaxy, which is visible for megaparsecs, from other galaxies, from other galaxy clusters!
The star Betelgeuse has recently become a leader among conspiracy theorists, and many unserious journalists have become leading figures in the world at the end of the year. Is the second star of a star in the constellation Orion planning to end its pilgrimage as a supernova? Is there a danger to the Earth or the life of our planet?
Supernova: Spectacular death with fireworks
Ford's alien prefect of the famous science fiction classic The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he says, comes from a planet orbiting the star Betelgeus. Betelgeuse is very easy to find in the winter sky because it is not only the eighth bright Star sky, but the constellation Orion is very unique in the sky.
The contents of the star - all the new heavy elements synthesized by it during its life - are turned outward, so that later, perhaps, they can form new planets, become amino acids, run as red blood cells in the blood of exotic aliens.
Stars of more moderate mass (like the Sun) live tens of billions of years relatively calmly, but at the end of their lives they begin to swell into red giants and supergiants. What else do they have left? All the nuclear fuel has been burned out, the core has shrunk to an enormous temperature in order to somehow prolong the fading life of the star, and there is nothing to hold the outer layers, their gas expands, cools and, naturally, turns red.
A supernova is definitely unknown to astronomers. In history, we have been able to observe a number of very bright supernovae that were unobservable in the sky or even visible to the naked eye and during the day. According to records from Egypt, China, France and other places, a very clear supernova was observed within a year.
His colleague Johannes Kepler also saw a "new star" in the constellation Hadonos in World Astronomy, still gaining valuable information from observing this phenomenon. Astronomers recognize two main types of supernovae. In the first case, here two stars go around common center gravity. From one star, material flows to the second star, which is a white dwarf. The weight of the white dwarf rises to a critical value of 1.44 Suns when the white dwarf explodes as a supernova.
Some stars still find the strength to ignite the helium inside the core and begin to synthesize carbon. Some then manage to repeat the synthesis cycle with carbon. Each subsequent synthesis requires an increasingly higher temperature and degree of compression and lasts much shorter than the previous one. Finally, the star has exhausted all its reserves, and this means its end. The outer layers are shed into space, becoming a slowly expanding planetary nebula, inside of which there is a hot core, whose stellar wind can sometimes collide in different combinations with the material of the nebula and form such bizarre shapes as those of the Cat's Eye Nebula or.
Betelgeuse or with whom we have honor
In the latter case, the supernova is the final stage in the development of very massive stars. Also, obesity is not healthy in space. The most massive stars experience very low ages of tens of millions of years. The second type of supernova will be more interesting to us, since this is the fate that awaits Betelgeu. Betelgeuse is so large that if we placed it in solar system, its border would approach almost Jupiter.
The determination of Betelgeus's weight is somewhat poorer. Various teams have tried to determine the exact weight of a star in the history of astronomy, but have not been very successful. Today's view is that Betelgeuse is 18 to 19 Suns, but the reality may be different. Weight is a key parameter in determining the future of a star.
But the most common stars in the Galaxy are not blue giants or yellow Main Sequence stars. These are red and brown dwarfs - almost established and completely unfulfilled stars. Well, let's try to deal with them.
Not much is known about Betelgei's distance. Astronomy has several scenarios for determining the distance from celestial objects. Relatively close stars use parallax, which, however, due to the size of Betelgeu, cannot be accurately measured. You can find different meanings in different catalogs, which are funny and accurate up to one bright year. The reality is that research over the past twenty years has shown Betelgei's distance from us to be between 330 and 650 light years. Currently, astronomers tend to be around 640-650 light years.
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO
The mass of red dwarfs is from 8 to 50% of the mass of the Sun. Due to such a small mass, the process of helium synthesis in their core can take 20 billion years - this is more than the age of the Universe! The atmosphere of red dwarfs is very turbulent, they create violent magnetic fields around themselves, which is accompanied by photospheric flares and variable brightness, especially in the X-ray range. A good example of a red dwarf is Proxima (Nearest) Centauri. After a long, long smoldering, thermonuclear fusion inside the burnt-out core of the dwarf can no longer resist gravity, and the star begins to shrink - very slowly, to the size of somewhere around the Earth. It is not possible to obtain a photo of such a star now; this will require time greater than the current age of the Universe! On the other hand, if such stars are discovered, it means something is wrong with our Big Bang Theory! The discovery is worth a couple of Nobel Prizes, get involved if you have the desire
Betelgeus is estimated to be 10 million years old, which is very retirement age for this type of star. It is therefore not surprising that a relatively early end is expected for this red peacock. What exactly is next for Betelgeuse? The pilgrimage of such stars of material is now quite well described. The star gradually burns hydrogen into helium during nuclear fusion. Material stars do not conserve their fuel, so all the hydrogen is consumed very quickly. The gravitational force will take precedence over the buoyancy force that will occur during compression - the temperature inside the star rises so much that it exceeds the helium burning limit.
Can sometimes reach 100 degrees Celsius! Also reported! Maybe this is already a gas giant planet? Maybe there is no upper boundary between giant planets and dwarf stars?...
And these dwarfs... are practically eternal!
What fate would you prefer in the place of these stars - a fast, stormy and bright youth, but a very short life, or a long, calm, but colorless maturity with an almost endless old age - fading?
The carbon material obtained by this fusion is carbon. But the helium spoiled star doesn't last long enough, and the scenario repeats itself. Other fusions produce oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon and finally iron. In addition, the body separates the material inside the star as heavier elements gradually sink toward the center and become lighter toward the surface. Individual shells are basically one specific element.
Then there is nothing to burn, gravity wins, and the star awaits death in the form of a massive explosion - a supernova glows in the Galaxy. A different fate determines the weight of the original star. Under normal conditions, only a small neutron star will remain in its original position. giant star after the release of the gas shell. Its size will be several tens of kilometers, but its weight will be comparable to the Sun. If Betelgeuse slowly rotates on its axis today, it will completely replace the neutron star and rotate it several times per second!
as well as many other sources, we get a very consistent picture of the Universe. It is composed of 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter, 4.9% ordinary matter, 0.1% neutrinos, 0.01% radiation and is about 13.8 billion years old. The uncertainty about the age of the Universe is around 100 million years, so while the Universe could certainly be a hundred million years younger or older, it is unlikely to reach 14.5 billion years.
With such a fast spinning neutron star we call pulsars. But if Betelgeuse's mass were much greater, its core would collapse again, and after the supernova exploded, a black hole would be created in the star's place. A supernova explosion means "playing over" for life within 30 light years. Before radiation, the atmosphere would not protect you in any way, and it would be red for life on the planet. Supernova explosions within a radius of about 100 light years will also have quite drastic consequences for animals and plants.
At a distance of 300 light years, a supernova can be troublesome, threatening astronauts in orbit, for example. Given lower estimates of Betelgeu's distance, there should be no danger. The danger isn't even a distant black hole. A gamma-ray flash may be the only risk. Gamma-rays spread from a dying star in narrow beams that emanate from both poles of the star. Unfortunately, Betelgeus' rotational axis is not facing us.
ESA's Gaia mission measured the positions and properties of hundreds of millions of stars near the galactic center and found the oldest stars known to mankind.
This leaves only one reasonable possibility: we must be misestimating the ages of the stars. We have studied hundreds of millions of stars in detail at different stages of their lives. We know how stars form and under what conditions; we know when and how they ignite nuclear fusion; we know how long the various stages of synthesis last and how effective they are; we know how long they live and how they die, different types with different masses. In short, astronomy is a serious science, especially when it comes to stars. In general, the oldest stars are relatively low mass (less massive than our Sun), contain few metals (elements other than hydrogen and helium), and may be older than the galaxy itself.
Recently gamma flares were written in Yaroslav Petr. If Betelgeuse explodes as a supernova, it will be visible in the night and day sky for several weeks. The only unfortunate aspect of Betelgei's possible end may be the temporarily cloudy skies. However, astronauts would be a little more difficult because all the technology would be observing the biggest event in the history of astronomy.
Advance ticket sales for the spectacular Celestial Theater are premature. You see the main character with the naked eye in the beautiful winter sky. One thing is for sure, it won’t be a thriller. Is there a star near us? And this is at least the second generation of stars because it contains slightly heavier elements.
Extremely old stars can be found in globular clusters
Many of them are in globular clusters, which, to be sure, contain stars 12 billion or, in rare cases, even 13 billion years old. A generation ago, people claimed that these clusters were 14-16 billion years old, straining established cosmological models, but gradually improving understanding of stellar evolution has brought these numbers into line with the norm. We have developed more advanced techniques to improve our observational abilities, by measuring not only the carbon, oxygen or iron content of these stars, but also by using the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. We can directly determine the age of individual stars.
If this meaning is true, then the discovery of a body whose age is dangerously approaching must always be open to us. Not to mention those who exceed this limit according to our observations. Now, at first glance, this was not very noticeable, although the very old star shuddered even from evil astronomers. They monitored its radiant intensity and temperature, and the data it obtained scanned the star's evolutionary patterns over time.
The moment we discover a cosmic object whose average value is estimated to be noticeably greater than the accurately consumed estimate of the age of the Universe, we get to something funny thin ice. Due to the high degree possible error in estimating the age of the star in question, it is of course very likely that this division is no older than the estimated age of the Universe. However, he would be very old. He would be the oldest famous star in the Universe! Moreover, it is only 190 light years away.
SDSS J102915+172927 is an ancient star 4,140 light years away that contains only 1/20,000th the heaviest elements of our Sun and should be 13 billion years old. This is one of the oldest stars in the Universe
In 2007, we were able to measure the star HE 1523-0901, which is 80% of the mass of the Sun, contains just 0.1% of solar iron, and is believed to be 13.2 billion years old based on its abundance of radioactive elements. In 2015 near the center Milky Way Nine stars have been identified that formed 13.5 billion years ago: just 300,000,000 years after the Big Bang. "These stars formed before the Milky Way and the galaxy formed around them," says Louis Howes, co-discoverer of these ancient relics. In fact, one of these nine stars has less than 0.001% solar iron; This is the type of star the James Webb Space Telescope will be looking for when it starts operating in October 2018.
This is a digitized image of the old star in our galaxy. This aging starHD140283 is 190 light years away. The Hubble Space Telescope clarified its age at 14.5 billion plus or minus 800 million years
The most striking star of all is HD 140283, informally nicknamed the Star of Methuselah. It's only 190 light-years away, and we can measure its brightness, surface temperature, and composition; we can also see that it is just beginning to develop into a subgiant phase to become a red giant. These pieces of information allow us to deduce a well-defined age for the star, and the result is worrying to say the least: 14.46 billion years. Some properties of the star, such as its iron content of 0.4% of the Sun, indicate that the star is old, but not the oldest of all. And despite the possible error of 800 million years, Methuselah still creates a certain conflict between the maximum age of stars and the age of the Universe.
The Milky Way has not changed for billions of years. But as stars grow older, the most massive ones cease to exist, and the least massive ones begin to turn into subgiants
Today it is obvious that something could have happened to this star in the past that we do not yet know today. Maybe she was born more massive and somehow lost her outer layers. Maybe the star absorbed some material later that changed its heavy element content, confusing our observations. It may be that we simply have a poor understanding of the subgiant phase in the stellar evolution of ancient low metallicity stars. Gradually we will derive the correct form or calculate the age of the oldest stars.
But if we are right, we face a serious problem. There cannot be a star in our Universe that is older than the Universe itself. Either there is something wrong with the estimate of the age of these stars, or something is wrong with the estimate of the age of the Universe. Or something else that we don’t understand at all yet. This is a great chance to move science in a new direction.
Astronomers are finding stars that are older than the Universe. How is this possible? Ilya Khel