Webb Telescope Finds Stars That Merge Create Life's Building Blocks

Scientists just solved a cosmic mystery that connects exploding stars to the very elements that make us who we are.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers discovered what remains after two stars collide and merge in a brilliant explosion called a luminous red nova. The answer surprised everyone: a supermassive star hundreds of times larger than our sun, surrounded by carbon-rich dust that could seed new worlds with the building blocks of life.

Andrea Reguitti from Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics led the team that studied nine different stellar mergers. Unlike most cosmic events that unfold over millions of years, these star collisions happen relatively quickly, over just months or decades, allowing scientists to watch in something close to real time.

The challenge was seeing what happened after the fireworks ended. When stars merge, they blast out dust equivalent to 300 times Earth's mass, creating a dense shell that obscures the newborn star for years.

The team observed two luminous red novas, one spotted in 2011 and another from 1997, using infrared vision that could pierce through the dusty veil. What emerged was unlike anything they expected: a cooler, larger star than the sum of its parts would suggest, with surface temperatures actually lower than our sun despite its enormous size.

If one of these stellar giants replaced our sun, it would swallow Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, reaching nearly to Jupiter's orbit.

The Ripple Effect

The discovery revealed something even more profound than a new type of star. The dust surrounding these merged stars contains carbon compounds like graphite, the same materials essential for life as we know it.

These stellar collisions happen throughout the universe, each one spewing massive amounts of life-friendly carbon into space. Over billions of years, this cosmic dust drifts through galaxies, eventually gathering into new solar systems and planets.

"We are made of carbon compounds, the same carbon that this dust is rich in," Reguitti explained. It's a different way of telling the old story that we are stardust, but now scientists can trace a direct path from stellar mergers to the chemistry of life.

The findings were possible only because of Webb's unprecedented ability to see distant galaxies and distinguish individual stars within them. The telescope observed AT 2011kp twelve years after its merger and AT 1997bs a full 27 years after its stellar collision, giving astronomers the time-lapse view they needed.

The research shows that the universe has more ways of creating the ingredients for life than we previously understood, with luminous red novas making significant contributions to the interstellar dust that eventually forms new worlds.

Every carbon atom in your body might have been forged in one of these spectacular cosmic collisions.