What can magnetized stars, commonly called magnetars, teach astronomers about the distribution of heavy elements throughout the universe? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how magnetars could be responsible for producing a respectable portion of the universe’s heavy elements, including gold, uranium, and platinum. This study has the potential to help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of elements throughout the universe and how this could lead to life as we know it.
For the study, the researchers analyzed data from previous studies regarding how flares erupting from magnetars could launch specific crustal materials into space, resulting in the formation of heavy elements. The goal of the study was to continue the search for how heavy elements are created throughout the universe, as astronomers have long hypothesized lighter elements like hydrogen and helium were formed in the Big Bang, while equally hypothesizing heavier elements form in stars.
In the end, the researchers estimated that magnetars could be responsible for creating between 1 to 10 percent of the heavy elements in the Milky Way Galaxy, including gold, platinum, and uranium.
“It’s pretty incredible to think that some of the heavy elements all around us, like the precious metals in our phones and computers, are produced in these crazy extreme environments,” said Anirudh Patel, who is a PhD candidate at Columbia University and lead author of the study.
Artist's illustration of a magnetar ejecting material into space. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Going forward, the researchers note how these findings could be enhanced using NASA’s Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) mission, which is a gamma-ray telescope due to launch in 2027 with the goal of identifying and analyzing elements throughout the Milky Way Galaxy and how they formed.
What new discoveries about magnetars will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: The Astrophysical Journal Letters, EurekAlert!