Stellar Mystery Solved: First evidence of lithium found in exploding star

This could be the first step in solving the so-called lithium riddle. Certain models of the Big Bang theory allowed astronomers to calculate fairly accurately how much lithium should be present in the universe. But understanding the amounts of this element observed in stars around us today in the Universe has given scientists headaches. The brightest nova explosion of the century took place in the year 2013 as stated by the European Southern Observatory this week. This was more than eighteen months after the initial explosive outburst.

Astronomers have long speculated that the latter part of the problem could be explained by novae expelling the element, “seeding” space with lithium and enriching the interstellar medium from which new stars are born.

Now, Dr Luca Izzo from the Sapienza University of Rome and his colleagues have used ESO’s telescopes in Chile to study a nova called the Nova Centauri 2013.

Then Nova Centauri 2013 (also known as V1369 Centauri) ignited up the skies and dazzled the sky-watchers with an explosion that was clearly detectable to the naked eye.

Now that traces of lithium have been found in an exploding nova, the mystery of the abundance of lithium in the galaxy might have been solved. This is the first detection of the element ejected from a nova system to date. “If we imagine the history of the chemical evolution of the Milky Way as a big jigsaw, then lithium from novae was one of the most important and puzzling missing pieces”, said team member Dr Massimo Della Valle from the INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Naples, and ICRANet, Pescara, Italy. “In addition, any model of the Big Bang can be questioned until the lithium conundrum is understood”. “This is the satisfying conclusion for a long search for them”, he told redOrbit, adding that the discovery “proves that you may need decades before a prediction is observationally validated”.

That could turn out to be launching point in resolving the assumed lithium puzzle. Results on this topic include these press releases: eso1428, eso1235 and eso1132. Although rare, and much less powerful than their larger supernova cousins, it was thought that over the history of the Milky Way enough novae likely occurred to explain this abundance of lithium. Stars in the “younger” Population I class can still be several billion years old!

In the 1970s, the attention of astronomers changed its course to novae as being the culprit.