The Universe's Foundry: Kilonova Dust and the Birth of Gold ✦
Original: "Heavy element dust explains the late-time spectra of kilonovae"
Neutron star mergers produce not only gold and platinum, but also metallic dust, whose thermal glow in the infrared range has finally been detected by JWST.
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A collision of two neutron stars: in an instant—mountains of gold and platinum. And then—from the smoke of the fire, metallic dust is born, glowing in infrared. JWST caught this light, and now we can weigh distant kilonovae by their dust emission. The gold in your ring may have once been part of such a cloud.
🎯 Imagine a dust grain the size of a thousand tungsten atoms—it's a million times smaller than a grain of sand, yet thanks to its enormous density (about 20 g/cm³), it can absorb all infrared radiation within the ejecta. And if such dust formed in a kilonova in our Galaxy, its thermal glow would be visible even through an amateur telescope!
\tau_d \approx 1 \,\left(\frac{M_d}{10^{-3}\,M_\odot}\right) \left(\frac{v_{\rm ej}}{0.1c}\right)^{-2} \left(\frac{t}{29\,\rm day}\right)^{-2}
Shows that a dust mass of about a thousandth of a solar mass is sufficient to make the ejecta opaque in the infrared a month after the merger.
Scientists
Christian DopplerD. B. McLaughlinDidier QuelozMichel MayorR. A. RossiterAlbert Einsteinneutron star
gravitational waves
spectroscopy
JWST
supernova
carbon
speed of lightLaws
Doppler effectgravitational lensingprinciple of constancy of the speed of lightmass–energy equivalenceEinstein field equationsMaxwell's equations