Scientists observed the chemical element lithium in material ejected by a nova for the first time, and the discovery could act as a piece to the puzzle of our galaxy's chemical evolution.
The incredible observation will help explain why some young stars have unexpectedly high levels of lithium, the European Southern Observatory reported. Lithium is believed to have been created by the Big Bang, and understanding its distribution in the universe has been difficult. Older stars tend to have significantly less lithium than what would be expected, while younger stars often have 10 times more.
Since the 1970s, scientists have been suggesting excess lithium in younger stars may have come from supernovae explosions, but studies failed to prove this idea. New observations of the Nova Centauri 2013 made using telescopes at ESO's La Silla Observatory, and near Santiago in Chile, could back up the hypothesis. The star exploded in December 2013, and is considered to be the brightest supernova of the century. The new observations revealed a clear signature of lithium being expelled from the brilliant supernova.
"It is a very important step forward. If we imagine the history of the chemical evolution of the Milky Way as a big jigsaw, then lithium from novae was one of the most important and puzzling missing pieces. In addition, any model of the Big Bang can be questioned until the lithium conundrum is understood," said Co-author Massimo Della Valle of INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Naples, and ICRANet.
The supernova's lithium emissions is calculated to be relatively tiny at less than a billionth of the mass of the Sun. Since there have been many billions of novae in the history of the Milky Way even this small emission is enough to explain the observed excess of lithium.
"It is very exciting, to find something that was predicted before I was born and then first observed on my birthday in 2013!" said Luca Izzo of Sapienza University of Rome, and ICRAN.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
