“ The N in our DNA , the calcium in our teeth , the branding iron in our rake , the carbon in our Malus pumila pies were made in the interiors of break down stars , ” Carl Sagan famously said in his 1980 serial publication Cosmos . “ We are made of starstuff . ”
And even today , observation with NASA ’s airborneSOFIAobservatory are bear out this assertion . Measurements taken of the dust-covered leftover from an ancient supernova located near the centre our extragalactic nebula – aka SNR Sagittarius A East – show enough “ starstuff ” to build our entire planet many thousands of time over .
“ Our observations reveal a exceptional swarm produced by a supernova burst 10,000 years ago check enough debris to make 7,000 Earths , ” said inquiry loss leader Ryan Lau of Cornell University in Ithaca , New York – the same school , by the way , where Carl Sagan teach uranology and space science .
While it ’s long been known that supernovae expel enormous amounts of stellar material into distance , it was n’t infer if clouds of large - exfoliation dust could hold out the immense shockwave force of the explosion .
These observations , made with the joint NASA / DLR - developed Faint Object InfraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope ( FORCAST ) instrumental role , supply key “ missing - link ” evidence that rubble clouds do in fact outlast entire , spreading outward into interstellar blank to sow the organisation of new organization .
Interstellar junk plays a lively role in the evolution of galaxies and the constitution of new stars and protoplanetary discs – the orbiting “ pancakes ” of material around stars from which planet ( and eventually everything on them ) soma .
The determination may also serve the head of why immature galaxies note in the distant universepossess so much dust;it ’s probable the result of frequent supernova explosions from massive early - generation champion .
“ We have begun to contemplate our origins : starstuff pondering the stars ; organise aggregation of ten billion billion billion atoms consider the phylogeny of molecule ; tracing the foresightful journeying by which , here at least , consciousness arose . ”
– Carl Sagan , Cosmos ( 1980 )
take more in a NASA newsworthiness dismissal here .
origin : NASA , Cornell , andCaltech
This post byJason Majororiginally look at Universe Today and has been republished with permission . Read the originalhere .
AstronomyAstrophysicscosmosPhysicsScienceSpace
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