Supernova dust factory seen; may explain early galaxy formation
light to Light, not dust to dust
Using a powerful radio telescope, scientists have spotted an enormous cloud of dust billowing in the center of a supernova - finally.
The discovery, announced at the American Astronomical Society, helps to confirm what scientists have long thought - that massive supernova explosions could have provided the dust found in the first galaxies.
Early galaxies were dusty places, but where did that dust come from when the universe was still so new?
Astronomers hypothesized that supernovae - the end-of-life explosions of stars at least eight times the size of our sun - may have been the source of that ancient, primordial dust.
There was just one problem with the hypothesis - whenever astronomers looked at a supernova, they never found enough dust to confirm that it was possible.
We looked at dozens of supernova, and the amount of dust we found always fell short of what we predicted," said Remy Indebetouw, an astronomer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the University of Virginia. "So then we started to wonder: Can they do it? Can supernova make enough dust to explain everything that happens in the first galaxies of the universe?"
"This is the first time we've been able to really image where the dust has
formed, which is important in understanding the evolution of galaxies."
In a new study accepted for publication by Astrophysical Journal Letters, Indebetouw and his colleagues show that they can.
