One billion light-years away, a kilonova explosion produced light 1 million times brighter than the Milky Way, and the Webb Telescope discovered that it had become a natural heavy metal factory producing rare elements such as tellurium.
There are a dazzling array of elements on the periodic table, but some can only be produced in space. On March 7 this year, the Webb Space Telescope, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Neil Grylls Swift Observatory and other instruments observed the second brightest gamma-ray burst in more than 50 years. The event was named GRB 230307A, which was more than the typical gamma-ray burst. Gamma bursts are about 1,000 times brighter, or more than 1 million times brighter than the entire Milky Way.
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The GRB 230307A event was the first time that the Webb Telescope observed the aftermath of a kilonova. The Webb Telescope and the Very Large Telescope further determined that the source was a kilonova caused by the merger of two neutron stars, about 1 billion light-years away from the Earth.
However, scientists suspect that these two neutron stars were originally just a pair of ordinary massive star binary systems orbiting each other in a spiral galaxy. After one of them became a supernova, it seemed that it separated from the parent galaxy and was ejected 120,000 light-years away, and the other Two stars followed, and they both turned into neutron stars and continued to bind each other.
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▲ The difference in position between the source of gamma ray burst GRB 230307A and the parent galaxy. (Source:NASA）
As time went by, the two neutron stars finally collided, causing a kilonova explosion. The Webb telescope found tellurium, the 52nd element in the periodic table: an element on Earth that is rarer than platinum (platinum) and slightly toxic. Can be used for solar panels (cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar photovoltaic), and can be overwritten and programmed.
Neutron star mergers have long been considered an ideal “pressure cooker” to produce various superheavy elements. However, kilonovae caused by neutron star mergers are extremely rare. It was not until 2017 that we first observed the collision of double neutron stars and confirmed that kilonovae can produce R- Process elements, scientists have detected the presence of strontium, the 38th element in the periodic table.
As the Webb telescope discovers more and more similar events, it will help researchers better understand the production conditions of precious chemical elements in the universe, and may also discover heavier and rarer elements. For the Webb telescope, the GRB 230307A event is just the beginning.
new paperPublished in the journal Nature.
(Source of first picture:NASA）
