TUDA Helps Lead Astrophysicists to Sources of Cosmic Aluminum

TUDA Helps Lead Astrophysicists to Sources of Cosmic Aluminum: The rare isotope aluminum-26 (²⁶Al) with a lifetime of roughly a million years is one of the most important sources of information about galactic nucleosynthesis and has been carefully studied using the most advanced telescopes. However, what's highly uncertain in stellar models are certain nuclear reactions that produce and destroy ²⁶Al. As reported in Physical Review Letters (2015) scientists using TUDA achieved precise new measurements for one of these difficult to experimentally explore reactions, ²⁶Al(p,γ)²⁷Si. The results provide astrophysicists more precise estimates about the destruction of ²⁶Al in massive stars, and about the contributions of various cosmic sources to ²⁶Al production.