LEED: Some stars might fire off ‘iron bullets’ when they explode, scientists have claimed – and this may have provided the iron for Earth’s core.
The researchers modeled supernovae – stars that explode at the end of their life – and found that one type of star would form giant ‘ears’ after going supernova.
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These would contain clumps of iron several times the mass of Jupiter that punched through a surrounding cloud of dust and gas, and then made their way across the universe.
The research was carried out by Dr Danny Tsebrenko and Dr Noam Soaker from the Department of Physics at the Israel Institute of Technology.
They used computer simulations to work out what happens when a Type 1a supernova takes place.
This is a supernova involving a white dwarf star and a companion star – either another white dwarf (known as double-degenerate), or a red giant (single-degenerate).
