Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-747, Korea.
Science. 2013 Dec 13;342(6164):1346-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1243823.
Phosphorus ((31)P), which is essential for life, is thought to be synthesized in massive stars and dispersed into interstellar space when these stars explode as supernovae (SNe). Here, we report on near-infrared spectroscopic observations of the young SN remnant Cassiopeia A, which show that the abundance ratio of phosphorus to the major nucleosynthetic product iron ((56)Fe) in SN material is up to 100 times the average ratio of the Milky Way, confirming that phosphorus is produced in SNe. The observed range is compatible with predictions from SN nucleosynthetic models but not with the scenario in which the chemical elements in the inner SN layers are completely mixed by hydrodynamic instabilities during the explosion.
磷（(31)P）是生命必需的元素，据认为它是在大质量恒星中合成的，并在这些恒星爆炸成为超新星 (SN) 时散布到星际空间中。在这里，我们报告了对年轻的 SN 残骸仙后座 A 的近红外光谱观测，结果表明 SN 物质中磷与主要核合成产物铁 ((56)Fe) 的丰度比高达银河系平均值的 100 倍，证实了磷是在 SN 中产生的。观测到的范围与 SN 核合成模型的预测相符，但与爆炸过程中内部 SN 层中的化学元素完全通过流体动力学不稳定性混合的情景不符。
