How do supernovae explosions contribute to the chemical evolution of the universe?
All elements heavier than boron are thought to be produced in the nuclear furnaces that power stars, or in supernovae, the explosive events that mark the end of many stars’ lives. These explosions, along with the ejection of novae shells and the slow winds from evolved stars, send newly made heavy elements into the interstellar and intergalactic medium where they become the raw materials for new stars, planetary systems, and perhaps life. The conflagration of white dwarf cores in binary systems Type 1a supernovae are important producers of Fe peak elements and are superb distance mileposts. The creation and dispersal of these heavy elements can be measured by observing the rates of supernovae (which should be observable to redshifts of z > 10, well within a billion years of the Big Bang), the strengths of spectral features around ancient star-forming regions, and in the integrated galactic light of established stars at redshifts z > 2. By comparing these data with the expected elementa
