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NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JPL-Caltech
Shells of cosmic dust created by the interaction of binary stars appear like tree rings around Wolf-Rayet 140.
- Nasa has revealed new pictures from the James Webb Telescope, showing carbon-rich dust rings around younger “hot” stars.
- Previously, it was thought only older “cooler” stars produced this dust.
- The dust remains even after the star has died.
- Scientists are working on figuring out how much stardust is present on Earth and other planets.
New images from Nasa’s James Webb Telescope reveal dust rings around “hot” stars in distant space – and that there might be more space dust on Earth than previously thought.
A new paper by astrophysicists around the world, including at the University of Auckland, explains how dust rings – such as the ones in Nasa’s new pictures – occur, and the effect they have in space.
Head of Physics at the University of Auckland and paper co-author Dr Jan Eldridge said the study – which 32 scientists from around the world contributed to – revealed stardust may make up a large part of Earth – and the lifeforms that live on it.
“We’re talking about carbon-rich dust, a bit more like cigarette or smoke particles.
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This dust, even though it’s carbon, has gone into generations of planets… that’s interesting – how much [of this dust] is carbon made and in our bodies?” she said.
“This is something we really don’t know. It could be a per cent, or it could be half [of all the dust on Earth]. We really don’t know and that’s why we’re trying to understand these things.”
Eldridge said the latest images of the dust rings are “unusual”.
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Fun facts about space from Nasa.
“We’re seeing these two hot stars during an eccentric orbit, where sometimes they’re closer and sometimes they’re further away.
“When they’re closer together they produce more of this dust that they then throw out into these rings that you can see,” she said.
Eldridge said it was expected that cooler and older stars produced the dust, however the latest images have confirmed that it was produced in younger and hotter stars too, and stuck around even after the star died.
“The fact we see it there literally tells us there’s no other place they could be coming from apart from being made by these hot stars, which is unusual because normally when we look at the universe we think it’s the cooler stars, like Betelgeuse…that produce the dust.”
Dust rings are formed when the winds produced by two stars that get closer together collide, resulting in materials being able to connect and make dust, that is then thrown away from the star to make rings.
“[The telescope] is an important piece in the puzzle that’s going to help us solve more mysteries about how dust and other elements are produced in the universe,” she said.
The world’s biggest and most powerful space telescope rocketed away last December from French Guiana in South America.
It reached its lookout point 1.6 million kilometres from Earth in January.
It has so far captured an image that showed a jumble of distant galaxies that goes deeper into the cosmos than humanity has ever seen.
The telescope has also captured pictures of a dying star and light from the edges of the universe, thanks to its infrared light spectrum.
Webb is considered the successor to the highly successful but ageing Hubble Space Telescope.
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