Scientists successfully reproduce the
atmosphere of a red giant
 |
| NASA makes space dust |
A team of scientists has re-created just what happens inside the swollen
atmosphere of a red giant and their internal processes eventually led to
the formation of planet-making dust, right here on Earth. The making of
this dust is tipped to help scientists gather clues for understanding the
evolution and makeup of the universe. “The harsh conditions of space
are extremely difficult to reproduce in the laboratory and have long
hindered efforts to interpret and analyse observations from space,”
says Farid Salama, the project’s leader and a space science researcher at
NASA’s Ames Research Center. Salama and his team used a specialised
facility called the Cosmic Simulation Chamber (COSmIC) to re-create and
study laboratory dust. When a star begins
to die, dust grains form around it and are thrown into
the interstellar medium, carrying with them the correct elements to form
planets after a life cycle that spans millions of years. COSmIC’s chamber
is able to imitate the conditions that permeate space, where densities are
billionths of Earth’s atmosphere and temperatures are under -168 degrees
Celsius (-270 degrees Fahrenheit). “We now can, for the first time,
truly re-create and visualise in the laboratory the formation of carbon
grains in the envelope of stars and learn about the formation, structure
and size distribution of stellar dust grains,” says Cesar Contreras of the
Bay Area Environmental Research Institute and a research fellow at
Ames. “This type of new research truly pushes the frontiers of science towards
new horizons and illustrates NASA’s important contribution to science.”
0 ความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น