The Universe's First Stars Exploded in Strange Ways - Scientific American

The Universe's First Stars Exploded in Strange Ways - Scientific American



...Scientists often assume the first stars ended their lives as spherical supernovae. A team of researchers, however, just presented the first observational evidence that at least one of these ephemeral fireballs instead exploded aspherically, spewing its contents out unevenly in multiple directions. The explosion flung forth jets powerful enough to propel heavy elements forged in the blast into neighboring galaxies, the researchers note in a study published on May 8 in the Astrophysical Journal. (Ji was not involved in the study, but his former doctoral advisor is one of its authors.)



...This led them to another surprise: how powerful the asymmetrical supernova explosion could have been. Its explosiveness likely had about a nonillion times (10 with 30 zeroes after it) the power of a hydrogen bomb, the researchers estimate—that is about five to 10 times more energetic than previously thought. The study provides new evidence that the explosions of the universe’s first stars may have contributed to the universe’s reionization—an important milestone in the early cosmos when neutral atoms became charged—and played a critical role in the development of galaxies.