Astronomers Overturn Decades-Old Theory About How Stars Spread Life’s Ingredients

Astronomers Overturn Decades-Old Theory About How Stars Spread Life’s Ingredients

New observations of a nearby red giant star suggest that a long-standing explanation for how giant stars spread life’s essential elements through the galaxy may be incomplete. Starlight pushing on grains of stardust may not be strong enough to launch the intense winds that flow from giant stars and carry life forming elements across the [...]

Stardust Study Resets How Life's Atoms Spread Through Space - Astrobiology

Starlight and stardust are not enough to drive the powerful winds of giant stars, transporting the building blocks of life through our galaxy. That’s the conclusion of a new study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, of red giant star R Doradus. The result overturns a long-held idea about how the atoms needed for life […] The post Stardust Study Resets How Life’s Atoms Spread Through Space appeared first on Astrobiology.

It’s Not Stardust! Astronomers Stunned by What Really Drives Life’s Ingredients Across the Galaxy

Aging stars have long been thought to blow life’s elements into space by using stardust as a vehicle, pushed outward by their own light. But recent observations of a nearby red giant suggest that this isn’t the case, dust alone doesn’t generate enough force to drive the stellar winds that spread the seeds of future planets. That conclusion comes from a detailed study of R Doradus, a star just 180 light-years away, where astronomers were able to …