EXPLODING stars act like cosmic cement mixers, according to an analysis that looks at how to spot this building material in space.
Cement is made by mixing water with calcium silicates, which are molecules made of calcium, silicon and oxygen. When very massive stars die, they explode and litter space with a variety of elements – including all the ingredients of cement. So far, no one has looked for the material in space, so we don't know how much, if any, is actually produced.
Goranka Bilalbegović at the University of Zagreb in Croatia and her colleagues worked out how cement particles would show up on an absorption spectrum, which measures the frequencies of light an object absorbs to reveal its chemical composition. They found that cement would have a unique infrared signature (arxiv.org/abs/1404.7392). The European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory found a similar and so far unexplained signal in dust shells around 17 supernovae.
If cement is made in space, it may explain why interstellar gas contains less oxygen than expected. The missing part is tied up in cement, says Bilalbegović .
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