Researchers have found that 97% of a person consists of matter created in the depths of stars. The conclusions were obtained on the basis of an analysis of 150 thousand luminaries of our Galaxy.
The thesis that man and all earthly objects consist of cosmic matter is not at all new. The famous American astronomer and popularizer of science Carl Sagan, in particular, spoke about this. However, now astronomers from the United States were able to more accurately figure out the origin of human atoms. New results from the massive Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) project were presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Most of the most important chemical elements that underlie life on Earth originated in the bowels of the stars. Scientists have even come up with a special abbreviation - CHNOPS, which includes carbon ©, hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), phosphorus (P) and sulfur (S). Now, using SDSS, astronomers have measured the concentration of these elements in 150 thousand luminaries of our Galaxy. This was done by analyzing the spectra of the luminaries. By splitting the light of a distant star in the spectrograph and analyzing the lines of individual elements in the resulting spectrum, scientists were able to find out the content of certain atoms in the interior of the star.
The task was performed using the APOGEE spectrograph, which is installed on the Apache Point telescope. It turned out that a person is 97% composed of a substance that appeared in the bowels of the stars. The study is also extremely important for understanding the nature of the Milky Way. So, scientists have come to the conclusion that the inner regions of our native Galaxy have more heavy elements. This is due to the fact that there are older luminaries, which in the course of their evolution have accumulated more heavy elements than younger stars in the outer parts of the Galaxy.
The new data also allowed scientists to better understand where this or that chemical element came from on our planet. Thus, astronomers have identified six main processes: nucleosynthesis in the Big Bang, explosions of massive stars, merging of neutron stars, death of low-mass stars, nuclear reactions under the influence of cosmic rays and explosions of white dwarfs.
Photo: Jennifer Johnson
Ilya Vedmedenko
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