Contents
During the Gaia mission, European scientists discovered earthquakes on the surface of stars, studied the chemical composition of stars and found out that they are based on heavy elements of carbon and nitrogen
What’s going on
- The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, launched in 2013, has collected data on the temperature, age, motion and chemical composition of 2 billion stars.
- In the course of analyzing the chemical composition, astronomers determined that after the Big Bang, the universe was dominated by light elements such as hydrogen and helium. The heavy elements, carbon and nitrogen, became the centers of the stars.
- When stars die, they eject these heavy elements into the universe, which in turn form new stars.
- However, there are stars that are based on carbon and nitrogen, which have not previously taken part in the birth of stars.
- Gaia also discovered that the surface of stars can pulsate, similar to earthquakes.
- According to scientist Alejandro Recio-Blanco, who examined the data collected by Gaia, the results tell about the history of the formation of the galaxy, and also show that the Sun was formed due to the accumulation of stars and gas of various origins.
- In addition, scientists have compiled a catalog based on 800 binary star systems, 156 asteroids and other space bodies that are outside our solar system.
What does it mean
Gaia is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission to map the Milky Way in XNUMXD. Among the objectives of the mission is to study the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Gaia measures the position and radial velocity to conduct a stereoscopic and kinematic census of about a billion stars in our galaxy.
Earlier in the course of the mission, a number of discoveries had already been made. So, it was determined that 10 billion years ago the area of the Milky Way was much smaller. The galaxy is expanding and will continue to expand as new stars are born.
In addition, scientists know that the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy has repeatedly passed through the Milky Way. This affected the movement of the stars. In May 2020, based on the Gaia data, the researchers concluded that as a result of one of the collisions about 4,7 billion years ago, episodes of star formation occurred, one of which coincided with the appearance of the Sun.