Small galaxies are generous: they make oxygen, then give almost all of it away

Every breath you take was forged in a star — and small galaxies, it turns out, cannot hold on to what their stars make. Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the GLOW team led by Rutgers astrophysicist Kristen McQuinn examined 37 dwarf galaxies within 22 million light-years and counted their oxygen, the easiest element to track. The galaxies kept only 4% to 25% of the oxygen their stars produced — about 11% on average — with the rest blown out by winds from massive stars and supernova explosions, farther and faster than computer models predicted. Published in The Astrophysical Journal, the census explains how the space between galaxies gets enriched with the raw material of future planets — and future breaths.