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Thank CTOnews.com netizens soft media Xinyou 1933769 for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, May 21 (Xinhua) NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found evidence of millions of supergiants in the early days of the universe, which are 10, 000 times the mass of the sun, possibly revealing the origin of heavy elements in the universe. The study was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics on May 5.

The team calls these giant stars "celestial monsters". They were born about 440 million years after the Big Bang and are one of the oldest stars in the universe. Researchers discovered the existence of these "celestial monsters" by analyzing the chemical composition of globular clusters, a structure of tens of thousands to millions of closely clustered stars.

With a history of 13.4 billion years, there are about 180 globular clusters in our Milky way galaxy, which is an important window for astronomers to explore the early age of the universe. However, although they all formed at the same time and environment, the stars in these clusters have different proportions of elements (oxygen, nitrogen, sodium and aluminum). Astronomers believe that this element diversity may be caused by the existence of supergiants. These supergiants were born in the high-density conditions of the early universe, burned at higher temperatures, produced heavier elements, and then "contaminated" the smaller young stars around them (they were usually made up of lighter elements).

But it is not easy to find these supergiants, which are 5000 to 10000 times the size of the sun and as hot as 75 million degrees Celsius. Because larger, brighter and hotter stars have a shorter lifespan, these celestial monsters have already died out in extremely violent explosions, known as supernova explosions. "globular clusters are 10 billion to 13 billion years old, while supergiants have a maximum lifespan of only 2 million years. As a result, they disappeared early from the clusters we can see now. Only indirect traces are left." Mark Gieles, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Barcelona and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

To find the chemical remnants of these ancient monsters, the researchers used infrared cameras from the Weber Space Telescope to look at the GN-z11 galaxy, one of the farthest and oldest galaxies ever found, 13.3 billion light-years from Earth. Different chemicals absorb and emit light at different frequencies, so by analyzing light from different globular clusters in GN-z11, astronomers found that their stars were not only dense, but also surrounded by large amounts of nitrogen. "the abundance of nitrogen can only be explained by the burning of hydrogen at extremely high temperatures, and only the core of a supergiant can reach such a temperature." Corinne Shabnell (Corinne Charbonnel), a professor of astronomy at the University of Geneva and lead author of the study.

After finding the first clue to the "celestial monster", the researchers will continue to observe more globular clusters and more galaxies to verify whether their findings are widespread.

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