We are all made of stars: half our bodies' atoms 'formed beyond t... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/27/we-are-all-mad...

We are all made of stars: half our bodies'

atoms 'formed beyond the Milky Way'
Simulations reveal that up to half the material in our galaxy arrived from smaller galactic
neighbours, as a result of powerful supernova explosions

Ian Sample Science editor

Thursday 27 July 2017 02.00BST

Nearly half of the atoms that make up our bodies may have formed beyond the Milky
Way and travelled to the solar system on intergalactic winds driven by giant exploding
stars, astronomers claim.

The dramatic conclusion emerges from computer simulations that reveal how galaxies
grow over aeons by absorbing huge amounts of material that is blasted out of
neighbouring galaxies when stars explode at the end of their lives.

Powerful supernova explosions can ing trillions of tonnes of atoms into space with such
ferocity that they escape their home galaxys gravitational pull and fall towards larger
neighbours in enormous clouds that travel at hundreds of kilometres per second.

Astronomers have long known that elements forged in stars can travel from one galaxy
to another, but the latest research is the rst to reveal that up to half of the material in
the Milky Way and similar-sized galaxies can arrive from smaller galactic neighbours.

Much of the hydrogen and helium that falls into galaxies forms new stars, while heavier
elements, themselves created in stars and dispersed in the violent detonations, become
the raw material for building comets and asteroids, planets and life.

Science is very useful for nding our place in the universe, said Daniel Angls-Alczar,
an astronomer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In some sense we are
extragalactic visitors or immigrants in what we think of as our galaxy.

The researchers ran supercomputer simulations to watch what happened as galaxies

evolved over billions of years. They noticed that as stars exploded in smaller galaxies,
the blasts ejected clouds of elements that fell into neighbouring, larger galaxies. The
Milky Way absorbs about one suns-worth of extragalactic material every year.

The surprising thing is that galactic winds contribute signicantly more material than
we thought, said Angls-Alczar. In terms of research in galaxy evolution, were very
excited about these results. Its a new mode of galaxy growth weve not considered
before. The simulations showed that elements carried on intergalactic winds could
travel a million light years before settling in a new galaxy, according to a report in the
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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This image shows M81 (bottom right) and M82 (upper left), a
pair of nearby galaxies where intergalactic transfer may be
happening. Gas ejected by supernova explosions in M82 can
travel through space and eventually contribute to the growth
of M81. Photograph: Fred Herrmann, 2014

Claude-Andr Faucher-Gigure, another astronomer on the team, said that before their
simulations, galaxies were thought to grow primarily by absorbing material left over
from the big bang. What we did not anticipate, and whats the big surprise, is that about
half of the atoms that end up in Milky Way-like galaxies come from other galaxies, he
said. It gives us a sense of how we can come from very far corners of the universe.

The scientists used computer models that created detailed 3D models of galaxies that
they could watch evolve in a dramatically speeded-up form from the moment they were
born to the present day. The animations can show whether stars in a galaxy formed from
material already in the galaxy, or from huge clouds of gas that fell in from neighbouring
galaxies.

The simulations show that more powerful intergalactic winds ow from bigger galaxies,
because there are home to more exploding stars, but also because the material has to be
moving faster to escape the galaxys gravitational pull. Plenty of material does not reach
a high enough speed and simply falls back into the galaxy where the supernova
occurred.

Our origins are much less local than we thought, said Faucher-Gigure. This study
gives us a sense of how things around us are connected to distant objects in the sky.

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