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NASA Finds Interstellar Matter From Beyond Our Solar System
An anonymous reader writes "For the very first time, a NASA spacecraft has detected matter from outside our solar system — material that came from elsewhere in the galaxy. This so-called interstellar material was spotted by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), a spacecraft that is studying the edge of the solar system from its orbit about 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) above Earth. 'This alien interstellar material is really the stuff that stars and planets and people are made of — it's really important to be measuring it,' said David McComas, IBEX principal investigator."
I think the idea is that most of the atoms we're made up of originate from before our solar system was formed. During the creation of our solar system, the matter was compressed, condensed, ignited or otherwise changed from how it existed as an interstellar gas and so doesn't exist in the same way anymore. It's not so much that we're interested in the individual atoms as we are in the collection of the interstellar material.
It seems the point is that "matter outside our solar system [...] seems to be deficient in oxygen compared to neon." (from TFA). The newly found matter seems to be distributed differently: 74 oxygen atoms for every 20 neon atoms compared to 111 oxygen atoms for every 20 neon atoms within the solar system. I still don't understand the "material what we're mad from" part...
You know you're dealing with something from outside the solar system because within the solar system, the solar wind (hot, fast-moving plasma) blows all diffuse material out very rapidly. If there's a large amount of material out at the edge of where we believe the boundary to be between the domain dominated by solar wind and the domain dominated by the rest of the galaxy, and that material has a composition not seen within the solar system, we can have as a very strong guess that its extra-solar. Anything else really is much less probable.
Which isn't to say that it is of the same composition as the gas+dust cloud that formed the solar system. That's long gone and the solar system has moved a lot since then.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Where to start. First, go out at night - all those little dots in the sky ? They're called stars, and are all outside our solar system. (This has been known, depending on your point of view, for at least 400 years, and probably for 2 or more millennia.)
Second, it is pretty common for meteorites contain little inclusions of interstellar matter - organic matter, silica, and even (really tiny) diamonds. And, while we are at it, a certain fraction of the micro-meteors observed with radar (to get their orbits) turn out to be interstellar as well. (The fraction of interstellar micro-meteors suggests that there may be a few kg-sized interstellar meteorites waiting to be picked up out of the thousands in the Antarctic meteorite fields, which would be something.)
So, this is nice research, but it is only the first in its area, and it was silly of them to say "for the very first time."
I still don't understand the "material what we're mad from" part...
It has been a while since I took astronomy so I am sure that I will get some corrections, but I will give it a shot.
:)
Right after the big bang, the universe was mostly made of of just hydorgen and helinm. Most of the rest of the elements are produced by stars. During its life and depending on how big the star is, the fusion process in the star can produce elements up to iron (I think). When the larger stars (I think it is about 10 times the size of our sun and greater) die, they go supernova. This explosive process produces the heavier elements and also dstributes them back out into the universe and in time they become the stars and planets in other solar systems like ours. So we are made from the remnents of dead stars.
Let the corrections begin