Tremendous amounts of dust (red) were detected in the centre of the supernova, within                     the outer shockwave (blue)

Stuff and Dust of Us – Supernova Creation

Striking images of a young supernova abundant with fresh dust at the centre, have been captured by a telescope in the Chilean desert.

It is the first time astronomers have witnessed the genesis of the grains which formed galaxies in the early universe.

The pictures were captured by the Alma (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) radio telescope.

Alma (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) telescope

They were revealed at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

They will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

It is generally known now that our star the sun, our solar system, planets like our home earth and ultimately us originate  from dust grains forged in the crucible of a massive dying star called a supernova. A supernova is the biggest known explosion in nature after the Big Bang which created our universe. Such is the tremendous heat and power produced all the known elements  that make us up are created.

Space & the  universe is full of tiny solid particles we can call space dust. We can see so called dark dust lanes  in our  Milky Way  galaxy  along with  beautiful clouds in  pictures from the Hubble  and other telescopes

Dust from dead stars more so supernovae  form  dust clouds particles of dust clumps/coalesces  together  driven by static electricity attraction then gravity as  mass of these clumps increases after attracting more and more smaller clumps.   At the centre of the the clump a proto-star forms under immense pressure until nuclear fusion is triggered. Spinning and orbiting this new star  star further clumps of dust coalesce in to the planets, moons and, asteroids  debris that makes up our solar system.  Although we know this dust exists throughout the universe and galaxies, there was no firm evidence of where it actually originated from.

In today’s universe, it largely forms around dying stars as they burn out. But these fading giants were not around at the dawn of the universe.

“It’s the same problem as we have in my house – there’s a lot of dust and we don’t know where it comes from. Space is quite a messy place,” quipped Remy Indebetouw, an astronomer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

“So we took one of the most technologically advanced telescopes ever – Alma – and tried to find out how dust formed in the early universe.”

“Supernovas have long been thought to be the creators – the bright factories that burst out building blocks for galaxies. But catching one in the act is far from easy.

“And even when we do spot a supernova cloaked in a dusty plume, there’s the old chicken-egg problem: how do we know that the cloud wasn’t there first?”

‘Not a nuisance’
To settle the argument, a team of astronomers from the UK and US used Alma to observe the glowing remains of 1987A, the closest recently observed supernova, 168,000 light-years from Earth.

They predicted that, as the gas cooled after the explosion, solid molecules would form in the centre from atoms of oxygen, carbon, and silicon bonded together.

Earlier observations of 1987A with the infrared telescope Herschel had only detected a small amount of hot dust.

But thanks to the power of the Alma radio telescope array, which stretches out over the Atacama desert, it took only 20 minutes to capture the evidence on camera.

“And all of that matter – the red area you see at the centre of the picture – was there in the core of the star before it exploded.That’s the exciting thing.

“People think of dust as a nuisance – something that gets in your way. But it turns out it’s pretty important and essential in creation.”

While supernovae signal the destruction of stars, they are also the source of new material and energy, says Dr Jacco van Loon of Keele University, a co-author on the study.

“Our lives would be very different without the chemical elements that were synthesised in supernovae throughout history,” he said.

“Grains are incredibly difficult to make in the vast emptiness of space. And if supernovae indeed make lots of them, this has very important and positive consequences for the eventual formation of the Sun and the Earth.”