Like milk,
our Milky Way Galaxy and the rest
of the universe is fortified with
calcium, the stuff of strong bones.
In fact, the cosmos contains 50 percent more calcium than previously thought, a
new study suggests.
Calcium is
a soft metal and the fifth most abundant element in Earth's
crust. Organisms depend on it for chemical assistance with muscle
contraction, bones and tooth structure, blood
clotting, fluid balance in cells, regulating the heartbeat
and other processes.
Explosions
of massive stars produce and eject lots of heavy elements into space. The
building blocks of new stars, planets and life are released during
the final moments of these supernova
blasts [video].
Iron that aids in producing our red
blood cells and the calcium that hardens our bones are made up of atoms
that come from these violent outbursts.
A
universal X-ray
Stellar
matter ejected from these explosions form swirls of hot gases that surround
galaxies. The calcium atoms in the hot gas emit X-rays with a specific
wavelength, which can be detected with instruments aboard ESA's
XMM-Newton X-ray observatory.
"The amount
of X-ray
radiation at that wavelength is related to the real amount of calcium,"
said Jelle de Plaa, a researcher at the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space
Research.
De Plaa and
colleagues looked to distant clusters of galaxies--containing
20 to 30 percent of visible matter--to measure the amount of calcium.
"In
clusters, a lot of the supernova products end up in the hot gas," De Plaa told SPACE.com.
"Clusters are in many ways the big cities of the universe."
The
researchers compared the amounts of the products expected from theoretical
models of supernovae with measurements from XMM-Newton X-ray observatory within
22 galaxy
clusters. The observed amounts for seven elements--oxygen, neon, silicon,
sulfur, argon, iron and nickel--jibed with theoretical predictions, but the
calcium did not match up.
"Since we checked that there was nothing wrong with our
measurements, we concluded that the supernova model (theoretical) must be under
predicting the calcium abundance," De Plaa said.
Got calcium?
Supernovae
explosions happen in every corner of the universe, but their influences can be
felt down on Earth.
"If certain types of supernovae indeed produce more calcium,
then this means that there must be more calcium in the universe compared to the
predictions from the supernova models," De Plaa said. "Then this is not only
true for clusters, but also for our solar
system and everything that lives in it, because we are mostly made of the
same supernova products."
The study
is detailed in a forthcoming issue of the journal Astronomy &
Astrophysics
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