How your smartphone is powered by debris from a nova star explosion

0
1


Thermonuclear detonations on white dwarf stars are “lithium factories,” according to a gamma-ray signal that is the first hard evidence that these explosions are creating the lithium used in our electronics.

Lithium was the heaviest element to be produced in the Big Bang, which also generated hydrogen and helium. Today, lithium is an integral part of our modern technology, utilized in lithium-ion batteries that power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.

Yet lithium is central to one of the great mysteries of the cosmos. As the universe cooled during the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, the first elements were forged. Hydrogen made up about three-quarters of those elements, and helium about a quarter. Then there was lithium, which was but a trace amount. Yet when astronomers look at the stars, they find that most of them show evidence for even less lithium in their composition than we’d expect from the amount produced in the Big Bang.

(Image credit: NASA/EESA/L. Hustak (STScI))

Astronomers have explained this by showing how lithium can be dragged down inside a star from its outer layers and destroyed. Yet some stars go against the grain — younger generations have much more lithium than older stars. Where is this lithium coming from?



Source link