Pictures Of Life Forming Elements From Hubble 3
osiris writes, "Just checking out the BBC news site to find that the Hubble telescope has been taking photos of some dying stars that seem to be creating carbon which is the building block of all life as we know it. "
Not that big a deal...first post, i mean (Score:2)
From the article. The actual production of carbon atoms isn't really big a deal. The carbon cycle that occurs inside the cores of stars has been known for at least several decades; its theoretical discovery won its originator the Nobel Prize. While it certainly is nice to have empirical confirmation of this theory, "life forming elements" is a rather misleading phrase. One could as easily assert that the "life forming elements" of hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen are being formed in our Sun now. It is the arrangement of these elements into complex structures that characterizes the formations of life.
First post too, I think (4:23 PM EST, March 9)
Agreed (Score:2)
In this theory, Stars produce every element on the Periodic Table, up to Iron. While Supernovae produce the heavier elements which in turn deposit into dust clouds and then produce more stars and planetary debris.
Information exists on the NASA Observatorium [nasa.gov]
The process is called Nucleosynthesis.
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
Re:Not that big a deal... (Score:2)
While it's true that we've known about the carbon cycle and nucleogenesis of heavier elements for quite a while, we still haven't developed a very clear understanding of the details of the whole process by which those elements are formed and then returned to the interstellar medium. For an example, just look at this planetary nebula [nasa.gov]: the structure is extremely difficult to understand, but it's clearly the result of the changing behavior of the parent star's stellar winds and their interaction with the local ISM. We used to just say that elderly stars "shed a lot of gas and dust" to form planetary nebulae -- a simple, first-order concept that obviously can't survive pictures like this!
Similarly, we've only recently begun to run more sophisticated numerical models of the interior of stars, in which we actually account in detail for things like convection -- and we're finding that the interior of a star is probably as complex (and unexpected) as these planetary nebulae. The models also help us understand why material which should remain deep inside the star is expelled as efficiently as it is (the parent star doesn't explode, but sheds the material in some less-violent fashion... so how does the inside get outside?) -- we just don't have the simple "spherical symmetry" that the first-order concepts posited.
This sample of planetary nebulae from the Large Magellanic Cloud should help the astrophysicists make the next step up in theoretical complexity... and I think that concept is actually found in the BBC article, as simplistic as it is. (Because it's so basic, the article just can't spend much time on that level -- I suspect that's what grates on the more-educated here.)
---