If you could hold bits of stardust on your palm, what would you do? For physicists at Michigan State University, investigating the particles is the best thing to do.
The MSU research team is currently investigating microscopic dust grains from a meteoritic material found on our planet in hopes of unlocking secrets of our galaxy. The particles are believed to be spewed out by stellar explosions that occurred prior to the birth of the sun.
The study, which will focus on whether these stardust particles came from classical nova explosions or not, is performed inside the university's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL).
A classical nova is a thermonuclear explosion on the surface of a small star that is part of two stars orbiting each other, or what is called a binary star system.
The explosion would have spewed out stellar material in the form of dust and gas into the space between stars in the galaxy. Some of the dust and gas would have been essential in the creation of our own solar system.
Christopher Wrede, spokesperson for the study and an assistant professor of physics at MSU, noted a cosmic recycling process at work in the phenomenon. When stars die, they eject dust and gas that often get recycled into the next generation of planets and stars, he said.
He and his colleagues at the NSCL conducted an experiment wherein they created and studied the exotic radioactive nuclei that have the strongest influence on the production of silicon isotopes in a series of novae.
The team found that the pre-solar grains contain strange amounts of isotope silicon-30 - an isotope that is quite rare on Earth.
Scientists know that silicon-30 is created in a classical novae, but do not know enough yet about the nuclear reaction rates in the explosion to be certain how much silicon-30 was created. This makes the origins of the pre-solar grains uncertain.
Still, the new nuclear path and computer models of the explosion will help researchers identify the grains.
Typical ways to study classical novae is by using telescopes and looking at the light, but Wrede said the pre-solar grains allow them to study the phenomena in a novel way.
"[I]f you can actually hold a piece of the star in your hand and study it in detail, that opens a whole new window on these types of stellar explosions," Wrede said.
The initial findings are featured in the journal Physical Review Letters.
