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what is the universe made of

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the vast majority of it consists of the

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wispy cosmic lightweights hydrogen and

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helium

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everything else on the periodic table

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contributes only a small fraction of the

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whole

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elements heavier than hydrogen and

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helium are forged in stars and during

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their explosive deaths as supernovas

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type 1a supernovas are nature's most

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productive foundries

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an old white dwarf star pulls gas off

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its giant neighbor

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the dwarf gains mass until it becomes

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unstable and blows itself to bits the

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explosion creates vast amounts of heavy

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elements and blasts them into space

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suzaku is an orbiting x-ray observatory

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operated jointly by nasa and the

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japanese space agency

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and it recently spotted the metals

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chromium and manganese in intergalactic

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space for the first time

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it's the largest known concentration of

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rare metals in the universe

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suzaku was looking at x-rays shining

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from the core region of the perseus

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galaxy cluster and detected the metals

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in hot thin intergalactic gas

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the gas is so thin it's close to a

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vacuum but it fills a volume of space in

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the cluster about 1.4 million light

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supernovas forged the metals and blasted

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them out of the galaxies but a single

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stellar explosion wasn't powerful enough

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to get the job done

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that requires periods of higher than

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normal star birth and death

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these so-called starbursts stirred up

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vast outflows of matter called super

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winds

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heavy elements forged by supernovas rode

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a single supernova can produce thousands

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of times earth's mass in chromium the

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suzaku astronomers estimate that it took

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some 3 billion supernovas to forge the

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treasure trove they found in the perseus

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cluster

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the total reservoir of heavy metal

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discovered by suzaku is even more

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staggering

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the perseus core region holds 30 million

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times the sun's mass and chromium about

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suzaku's chemical census of the universe

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is just beginning but it's already