Using a telescope at the university’s McDonald Observatory, astronomer Keith Hawkins studied the chemistry of twin stars to see if they are identical twins or just fraternal. Their work, which has been accepted for publication in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shows that most twin stars are chemically identical, something that could lead to a better understanding of the history of the galaxy throughout weather.
The results have implications that go beyond understanding binary stars.
Many stars are born from a single cloud of dust and gas, and over billions of years, those stars that were born together end up scattered in different parts of the galaxy. However, analysis of 25 widely separated binary stars identified by the Gaia satellite in order to study their chemical compositions revealed that the twin stars appear to share chemical “dna”.
Using the 2.7-meter Harlan J. Smith telescope at the McDonald Observatory, the team took a deeper look at the chemical makeup of the 50 stars and found that the stars that were born together were virtually identical, something that could help scientists figure out. map the history of the Milky Way galaxy.
Hawkins’ research on the chemical composition of each of the binary stars is much more exhaustive than any previous similar study, identifying that stars born that way had a very coincident chemistry, while stars belonging to the same type, but arbitrarily selected, they did not possess this characteristic. In this way, this cosmic clue could help us read the stars in the Milky Way through chemical labeling and learn which ones were born simultaneously from the same cloud of dust and gas. That’s right, we can use twin stars to study the antecedents of all the galaxies in our universe, something that is undoubtedly puzzling at best. The value of this work can hardly be overrated.
Stellar nurseries
Astronomers call “large assemblages of loose stars in formation,” “stellar nurseries,” which, Hawkins explained, “disperse over time” (that is, a few million or even billions of years). But if chemical labeling is really a reliable concept, astronomers will be able to go back to where the stars began, using their trajectories, as Hawkins put it, “going back over the galaxy’s assembly history.”
A deeper understanding of the evolution of our Milky Way will provide the foundation for understanding even the building blocks of the universe .
The team is made up of researchers from the University of Texas, Austin, Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley and the Carnegie Observatories (United States) and was funded by Research Corporation for Science Advancement.
Referencia: The chemical homogeneity of wide binaries from Gaia DR2: arXiv:1912.08895v1 [astro-ph.SR] arxiv.org/abs/1912.08895]
