Researchers from the universities of Tel Aviv, Leuven and Amsterdam found that stars of the first generation – the so-called population III – are often formed not individually but in binary systems. This is reported by the Astrophysical Journal (AJ).
According to scientists, the mass of star population III can exceed the mass of the sun hundreds, even thousands of times. Such objects existed only for 100-200 million years, but they changed the face of the Universe: heavy elements were synthesized in their depths – carbon, oxygen and iron, from which planets and living organisms were subsequently formed. The explosions of the first supernovas filled space with matter, which became the building blocks of new stars and galaxies.
To test the hypothesis about the “pair” origin of the first bright stars, scientists analyzed data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. They studied about a thousand stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy with a low content of heavy elements similar to conditions in the early Universe. Spectral analysis shows that at least 70% of the heaviest stars are in close binary star systems.
This discovery is the first direct confirmation that even in the pristine conditions of space, stars are often born together. According to the authors, the interactions of such pairs – matter exchange, collisions and supernova explosions – play a key role in cosmic evolution.
