Our History in the Stars Revealed by Gas and Dust
Astronomers mapped the substance aluminum monoxide (AlO) in a cloud around a distant young star — Origin Source I. The finding clarifies some important details about how our solar system, and ultimately we, came to be. The cloud’s limited distribution suggests AlO gas rapidly condenses to solid grains, which hints at what an early stage of our solar evolution looked like.
Professor Shogo Tachibana of the UTokyo Organization for Planetary and Space Science has a passion for space. From small things like meteorites to enormous things like stars and nebulae — huge clouds of gas and dust in space — he is driven to explore our solar system’s origins.The white inclusions on this chondrite meteorite are called CAIs. Rich in calcium and aluminum they are among the oldest solid matter in the solar system.
Credit: © 2019 Rohan Mehra – Division for Strategic Public Relations
Space rocks of all kinds greatly interest astronomers as these rocks can remain largely unchanged since the time our sun and planets formed from a swirling cloud of gas and dust. They contain records of the conditions at that time — generally considered to be 4.56 billion years ago — and their properties such as composition can tell us about these early conditions.
“On my desk is a small piece of the Allende meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969. It’s mostly dark but there are some scattered white inclusions (foreign bodies enclosed in the rock), and these are important,” continued Tachibana. “These speckles are calcium and aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs), which were the first solid objects formed in our solar system.”
Minerals present in CAIs indicate that our young solar system must have been extremely hot. Physical techniques for dating these minerals reveal a fairly specific age for the solar system. However, Tachibana and colleagues wished to expand on the details of this stage of evolution.
ALMA image showing AlO around the star Orion Source I at wavelengths of 497 gigahertz (left) and 650 gigahertz (right).
Credit: © 2019 Astrophysical Journal Letters/Shogo Tachibana
ALMA was the ideal tool as it offers extremely high resolution and sensitivity to reveal the distribution of AlO around the star. No other instrument can presently make such observations.
Professor Shogo Tachibana from the UTokyo Organization for Planetary and Space Science.
Credit: © 2019 Rohan Mehra – Division for Strategic Public Relations
The team now plans to explore gas and solid molecules around other stars to gather data useful to further refine solar system models.
Contacts and sources:
Professor Shogo Tachibana
UTokyo Organization for Planetary and Space Science, The University of Tokyo,
Ms. Kristina Awatsu
Office of Communication, The University of Tokyo
Shogo Tachibana, Takafumi Kamizuka, Tomoya Hirota, Nami Sakai, Yoko Oya, Aki Takigawa, and Satoshi Yamamoto.Astrophysical Journal Letters. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab1653
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