Wolf-Rayet stars are on the verge of exploding as supernovae. Before they go boom, they produce an enormous amount of important cosmic dust.
While the nebula from other WR stars is more uniform, M1-67 is knotted and clumpy, probably from interactions with the interstellar medium. The nebula is both gaseous and dusty, with clumps of material 30 times more massive than Earth. The clumps are so large they would reach from the Sun to Saturn if they were in our Solar System. The gas in M1-67 is moving rapidly and is also extremely hot.
Cosmic dust makes only a tiny contribution to the Universe’s baryonic mass, only about 0.1%. But it plays an outsize role in the Universe’s physics and chemistry. In particular, dust plays an important role in star formation, where it’s sometimes called ‘hydrogen’s wingman.’ Dust plays another role in star formation, too. Once a new young star bursts to life in fusion, its powerful UV radiation can prevent gas in nearby clouds from forming the necessary hydrogen bonds, stopping more new stars from forming. But dust can act as a shield, absorbing UV and emitting it as infrared light. In this way, the UV can’t stop the hydrogen from forming molecules and, eventually, stars.
“What we refer to as the ‘dust budget crisis’ is the major problem in astronomy of not being able to account for all the dust that’s observed in galaxies, both in the nearby and distant, early universe,” said Ryan Lau of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. “The mid-infrared light that Webb can detect is exactly the wavelength of light we want to look at to study the dust and its chemical composition.” Lau is part of the JWST’s effort to study dust-producing WR stars.
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