Ancient Stars Could Make Elements With More Than 260 Nucleons

By Brian Koberlein - December 15, 2023 12:20 PM UTC | Stars
Elements heavier than iron, like gold or platinum, were created when massive stars died or through colliding neutron stars. Some of our heavy elements on Earth resulted from an even heavier element decaying through fission. Astronomers studied several stars and found elements that must have been formed through the death of previous generations of stars and the fission of their matter. Some of these elements would have been more than an atomic mass of 260.
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Did the Last Great Galactic Merger Create the Milky Way's Bar?

By Brian Koberlein - December 08, 2023 01:41 PM UTC | Milky Way
About 8-11 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy merged with the Milky Way, adding 50 billion solar masses of stars, gas, and dark matter. The object is known as the "Gaia Sausage" because of the extended stream of stars found using ESA's Gaia mission. Astronomers think the Milky Way's central bar formed roughly the same time as the merger. A new paper suggests that merging with the Gaia Sausage triggers the formation of the Milky Way's bar and the build-up of its disk.
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