First stars may have been heavier than 100,000 suns
(ORDO NEWS) — The universe was just different when I was younger. Recently, astronomers have discovered that complex physics in a young space could lead to the development of supermassive stars, each weighing 100,000 times the mass of the Sun.
We do not currently have observations of the formation of the first stars in the universe, which is thought to have happened when our cosmos was only a few hundred million years old.
To understand this important era, astronomers are turning to sophisticated computer simulations to test models of how the first stars formed.
For years, astronomers have wrestled with the key question of what the typical size of the first stars was.
Some early estimates predicted that the first stars could be hundreds of times more massive than the Sun, while later simulations suggested they would be more than normal in size.
Recently, a group of researchers put together a new round of research. simulations and came to a very unexpected conclusion.
Their simulations specifically looked at a phenomenon known as cold accretion. To build big stars, you need to draw a lot of material into a very small volume very quickly.
And you must do this without raising the temperature of the material, because the warmer material will prevent destruction.
Therefore, you need some method of removing heat from the material as it degrades very quickly.
Previous simulations have found the appearance of dense pockets in early galaxies that are rapidly cooling due to emitted radiation, but lacking resolution. to trace their further evolution.
The new study goes one step further by looking at how cold, dense pockets that originally formed in the early universe behave.
These models showed that large flows of cold dense matter could collide with an accretion disk at the center of giant clumps of matter.
When this happens, a shock wave is formed. This shock wave quickly destabilizes the gas and causes large pockets of matter to collapse instantly.
These large foci can be tens of thousands of times more massive than the Sun, and in some cases even 100,000 times more massive than the Sun.
Because nothing can stop them from collapsing, they immediately form giant stars known as supermassive stars.
Astronomers do not yet know if supermassive stars formed in the early universe.
They hope that future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope will provide clues to the formation of the first stars and galaxies and determine whether these monsters appeared in the rudimentary universe.
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