Establishing the Properties of the First Stars and Supernovae and the Origins of the Heaviest Elements with Stellar Archaeology

大爆炸留下的宇宙仅由氢、氦和少量锂组成。随着时间的推移，元素周期表中越来越多的较重的化学元素在恒星、超新星爆炸和中子星合并中产生。天文学家研究古老的恒星是为了了解这些元素的宇宙历史，以及它们的存在如何影响整个宇宙时间内恒星和星系的形成。这些恒星的年龄超过130亿年，因此在宇宙大爆炸后不久就形成了。这些低质量恒星随着时间的推移变化非常缓慢，因此保留了它们形成时宇宙的“化学指纹”。研究人员打算将对恒星的观测组织成一个化学序列，从而更好地理解我们在地球上发现的元素。这位调查员将通过与本科生合作制作视频来扩展她的公共教育工作，描述天文学与普通消费品的联系。这些视频将通过该机构的外展计划分发，学生将获得媒体工作和科学传播的技能。研究人员将使用智利的大型麦哲伦望远镜观测银河系和小卫星矮星系中的这些古老恒星。这将使她能够解开关于第一批点亮宇宙的恒星以及相关的第一元素产生事件的关键信息，这些信息是任何其他方法都无法获得的。它还将提供长期缺失的有关最重元素（如银和金）生产地点的详细信息。她还将使用恒星化学成分作为关键指标来寻找幸存的第一个星系。总之，这使她能够重建宇宙是如何从只有几颗恒星演变成今天丰富而复杂的宇宙的。她的研究结果将指导许多研究领域，如早期恒星和星系的形成、核物理、恒星核合成、矮星系、银河系的形成，并补充当前和下一代望远镜获得的远场观测。

The Big Bang left behind the Universe made from just hydrogen, helium, and tiny amounts of lithium. With time more and more of all heavier chemical elements from the Periodic Table were produced in stars, supernova explosions, and mergers of neutron stars. Astronomers study old stars to understand the cosmic history of the elements and how their presence has influenced star and galaxy formation throughout cosmic time. These stars are over 13 billion years old and thus formed very early in the Universe soon after the Big Bang. These low mass stars change very slowly with time and so preserve a "chemical fingerprint" of the Universe at the time they formed. The investigator intends to organize observations of stars into a chemical sequence leading to a better understanding of the elements that we find on Earth. The investigator will expand upon her public education efforts by working with undergraduate students to produce videos describing the astronomical connection to common consumer products. The videos will be distributed through the institution's outreach program and the students will gain skill in media work and science communications.The investigator will use the large Magellan telescope in Chile to observe these old stars in the Milky Way galaxy and small satellite dwarf galaxies. This will enable her to unlock critical information about the very first stars that first lit up the Universe and the associated first element production events that cannot be obtained with any other method. It will also provide long-missing details about the production sites of the very heaviest elements, e.g., silver and gold. She will also search for surviving first galaxies using stellar chemical composition as a key indicator. Altogether, this enables her to reconstruct how the Universe evolved from just a few stars into today's rich and complex Universe. Her results will guide many research areas such as early star and galaxy formation, nuclear physics, stellar nucleosynthesis, dwarf galaxies, formation of the Milky Way, and complement far-field observations to be obtained with current and next generations of telescopes.