Universe full of calcium

[alokmohan]

Universe fortified with calcium<br /><br /><br /> Send To Friend<br /><br /><br /><br />New York, Feb 13: Just as human being need calcium to keep bones strong, so does the universe to keep itself going.<br /><br />A new study finds that the Milky Way Galaxy and the rest of the universe is fortified with calcium and the cosmos contains 50 per cent more calcium than previously thought.<br /><br />Calcium is a soft metal and the fifth most abundant element in Earth's crust. Organisms depend on it for chemical assistance with muscle contraction, bones and tooth structure, blood clotting, fluid balance in cells, regulating the heartbeat and other processes.<br /><br />Reporting the study, space.Com says explosions of massive stars produce and eject lots of heavy elements into space. The building blocks of new stars, planets and life are released during the final moments of these supernova blasts.<br /><br />Iron that aids in producing our red blood cells and the calcium that hardens our bones are made up of atoms that come from these violent outbursts.<br /><br />Stellar matter ejected from these explosions form swirls of hot gases that surround galaxies and the calcium atoms in the hot gas emit X-rays with a specific wavelength, which can be detected with instruments aboard ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory.<br /><br />"The amount of X-ray radiation at that wavelength is related to the real amount of calcium," said Jelle de Plaa, a researcher at the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research told Space.Com. <br /><br />De Plaa and colleagues looked to distant clusters of galaxies containing 20 to 30 percent of visible matter to measure the amount of calcium. "In clusters, a lot of the supernova products end up in the hot gas," De Plaa told SPACE.Com. "Clusters are in many ways the big cities of the universe." The researchers compared the amounts of the products expected from theoretical models of supernovae with measurements from XMM-Newton X-ray observatory within 22 galaxy clusters.