Light from a quasar shows hints of one of the universe’s first stars

There is a person by the name ofLeah Crane.

There may be traces of the very first stars. The Population III stars are thought to have exploded in massive supernovas that destroyed the stars completely, and the remnants of one of these events may have been seen by the astronomer.

The University of Tokyo and their colleagues found these hints while examining the light of a quasar, an extremely bright object at the center of a galaxy powered by matter falling into a super massive black hole. One of the most distant quasars ever seen is called J1342+0928. It formed after the big bang.

The light from the quasar revealed more iron than the sun has. The quasar has a low amount of magnesium. The relative abundances of these elements can be used to determine what type of object they came from. Standard models were not able to explain the abundances found in this quasar.

A pair-instability supernova is a type of explosion that only occurs in massive stars and leaves no stellar core behind. If a supernova exploded close to the quasar it would cause debris to fall towards the center of the galaxy.

The mass of the exploding star determines the amount of magnesium produced. A pair-instability supernova of a star with a mass about 300 times that of the sun provides a ratio of magnesium to iron that matches the low value we derived for the quasar.

He said this is the clearest sign of a pair-instability supernova. The existence of Population III stars, which are 130 times the size of the sun, may be evidence for the existence of these supernovas.

The stars are important to our understanding of the universe because they would have been the first to create elements that were more massive. It is hard to find a way to create super massive black holes in the early universe without similar stars.

The Astrophysical Journal can be found in the journal section.

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