Newly discovered star has a nearly pure oxygen atmosphere.

[Confounding]

Pretty cool.

Newly Discovered Star Has an Almost Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

A newly discovered star is unlike any ever found. With an outermost layer of 99.9 percent pure oxygen, its atmosphere is the most oxygen-rich in the known universe. Heck, it makes Earth's meager 21 percent look downright suffocating. The strange stellar oddity is a radically new type of white dwarf star, and was discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers led by Kepler de Souza Oliveira at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The star is unique in the known pool of 32,000 white dwarf stars, and is the only known star of any kind with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere. The new white dwarf has a mouthful of a name—SDSSJ124043.01+671034.68—but has been nicknamed 'Dox' (pronounced Dee-Awks) by Kepler's team.

 

[IsaacNewton]

Pretty cool.

Newly Discovered Star Has an Almost Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

A newly discovered star is unlike any ever found. With an outermost layer of 99.9 percent pure oxygen, its atmosphere is the most oxygen-rich in the known universe. Heck, it makes Earth's meager 21 percent look downright suffocating. The strange stellar oddity is a radically new type of white dwarf star, and was discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers led by Kepler de Souza Oliveira at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The star is unique in the known pool of 32,000 white dwarf stars, and is the only known star of any kind with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere. The new white dwarf has a mouthful of a name—SDSSJ124043.01+671034.68—but has been nicknamed 'Dox' (pronounced Dee-Awks) by Kepler's team.

Amazing. Now physicists will have to figure out how that would happen. So many great discoveries waiting to be found out there, thanks for posting this.

 

[waltky]

Oxygen Presence in Distant Galaxy Sheds Light on Early Universe...

Oxygen Presence in Distant Galaxy Sheds Light on Early Universe
May 16, 2018 | WASHINGTON — After detecting a whiff of oxygen, astronomers have determined that stars in a faraway galaxy formed 250 million years after the Big Bang -- a rather short time in cosmic terms -- in a finding that sheds light on conditions in the early universe.

Their research, published on Wednesday, provides insight into star formation in perhaps the most distant galaxy ever observed. The scientists viewed the galaxy, called MACS1149-JD1, as it existed roughly 550 million years after the Big Bang, which gave rise to the universe about 13.8 billion years ago. Light emitted by MACS1149-JD1 traveled 13.28 billion light years before reaching Earth. Looking across such distances lets scientists peer back in time. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). The detection of oxygen in MACS1149-JD1 was particularly instructive. The universe initially was devoid of elements such as oxygen, carbon and nitrogen, which were first created in the fusion furnaces of the earliest stars and then spewed into interstellar space when these stars reached their explosive deaths.

A galaxy located 13.28 billion light-years away is giving scientists new insight into the early history of the universe, with the detection of the oldest-known evidence of oxygen.​

The presence of oxygen showed that an even earlier generation of stars had formed and died in MACS1149-JD1 and that star formation in that galaxy began about 250 million years after the Big Bang when the universe was only about 2 percent of its current age, the researchers said. The oxygen in MACS1149-JD1 was the most distant ever detected. "Prior to our study, there were only theoretical predictions of the earliest star formation. We have for the first time observed the very early stage of star formation in the universe," said astronomer Takuya Hashimoto of Osaka Sangyo University in Japan.

The study marked another step forward as scientists hunt for evidence of the first stars and galaxies that emerged from what had been total darkness in the aftermath of the Big Bang, a time sometimes called "cosmic dawn." "With these observations, we are pushing back the limit of the observable universe and, therefore, we are coming closer to the cosmic dawn," University College London astronomer Nicolas Laporte said, adding that computer simulations suggest that the first stars appeared around 150 million years after the Big Bang. The researchers confirmed the distance of the galaxy with observations from ground-based telescopes in Chile and reconstructed the earlier history of MACS1149-JD1 using infrared data from orbiting telescopes. The research was published in the journal Nature.

Oxygen Presence in Distant Galaxy Sheds Light on Early Universe

 

[Old Rocks]

I remember when the first voyagers gave us the first look at our solar system. And how we learned it was so much more complicated and interesting than we had imagined. And now we have launched a telescope that will give us a better look at extrasolar planets, and we will know more about them than we did about our own solar system when I was young. What and interesting a wonderful age we live in.

 

[Dan Stubbs]

Pretty cool.

Newly Discovered Star Has an Almost Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

A newly discovered star is unlike any ever found. With an outermost layer of 99.9 percent pure oxygen, its atmosphere is the most oxygen-rich in the known universe. Heck, it makes Earth's meager 21 percent look downright suffocating. The strange stellar oddity is a radically new type of white dwarf star, and was discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers led by Kepler de Souza Oliveira at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The star is unique in the known pool of 32,000 white dwarf stars, and is the only known star of any kind with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere. The new white dwarf has a mouthful of a name—SDSSJ124043.01+671034.68—but has been nicknamed 'Dox' (pronounced Dee-Awks) by Kepler's team.

That much oxygen would kill us like a poison. I wonder what is generating that amount of oxygen.

 

[Indeependent]

Pretty cool.

Newly Discovered Star Has an Almost Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

A newly discovered star is unlike any ever found. With an outermost layer of 99.9 percent pure oxygen, its atmosphere is the most oxygen-rich in the known universe. Heck, it makes Earth's meager 21 percent look downright suffocating. The strange stellar oddity is a radically new type of white dwarf star, and was discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers led by Kepler de Souza Oliveira at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The star is unique in the known pool of 32,000 white dwarf stars, and is the only known star of any kind with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere. The new white dwarf has a mouthful of a name—SDSSJ124043.01+671034.68—but has been nicknamed 'Dox' (pronounced Dee-Awks) by Kepler's team.

That much oxygen would kill us like a poison. I wonder what is generating that amount of oxygen.

Bizarro cow farts.