A research project coordinated by Curtin University in Australia has recently discovered a rare dust particle trapped in an ancient meteorite that was formed by a star other than the Sun, reports Xinhua, cited by Agerpres. The discovery was made by the study’s lead author, Nicole Nevill, and her colleagues during her doctoral studies at the Australian university. Nicole Nevill currently works at the Lunar and Planetary Science Institute in the United States. Meteorites are space rocks that fall to Earth’s surface, providing samples of matter from other planets, asteroids and possibly comets in the Solar System, but some of them may contain tiny particles that came from other stars born long before the Sun. According to the study published in the Astrophysical Journal, Nicole Nevill used atom probe tomography to analyze a carbonate chondrite collected from the Allan Hills region of Antarctica and reconstruct its chemistry at the atomic scale, revealing the information hidden within it. In a recent press release, Nicole Nevill said the particle her team discovered has a magnesium isotope ratio that is “unlike anything else in our solar system.” “The most extreme magnesium isotopic ratio from previous studies of presolar grains was about 1,200. The grain in our study has a value of 3,025, which is the highest value ever discovered,” the researcher said. “This exceptionally high isotopic ratio can only be explained by the formation of the particle in a newly discovered type of star – a hydrogen-burning supernova,” she added. David Saxey, co-author of the study and principal investigator at Curtin University, pointed out that the new study opens up new perspectives on how humans understand the Universe, pushing the limits of both analytical techniques and astrophysical models.
“Atom probe tomography gave us a whole level of detail that we couldn’t access in previous studies,” said David Saxey.
