Gold from Neutron Stars?

Diplomat73 writes: "That's right! The NY Times reports that Scientists have traced gold to Neutron Stars. A team of scientists said Thursday that the origins of most of the gold, platinum and other heavy elements on Earth can be traced to the massive explosions of colliding neutron stars, hundreds of millions of years before the birth of the Solar System.

Comments

Re:Gold Rush

[Bonker]

So who do you think will be the first one to mine a neutron star, the Americans, the Russian, or the Chinesse?

Actually mining a Neutron star would be... difficult.

First of all, the reason a neutron star is called such is because all the proton and electrons have decayed into neutrons due to the intense gravity. (I'm not sure of the exact physics. Someone clarify for me.) Gold and Platinum won't exist per se on a Neutron star. You'll just have one large, endless sea of nigh-impervious neutron matter.

Second of all, even if you did want to mine Neutronium, the graviational forces that converted the rest of the star's core to neutronium would do the same thing to you once you touched down, assuming the tidal forces of the star's gravity didn't tear your mining ship to shreads on close approach.

The only real way to extract gold and platinum from Neutron stars is to do it the way we have been for thousands of years as has been described in the article, IE: wait for them to collide and explode and then pick through the remnants. Our solar system and planet just happened to have formed out of such a mess, so we have a relatively abundant supply of these minerals on Earth and are likely to have abundant supplies elsewhere in the Solar system.

If we could actually control the collision of two such stars or were able to use energy devices to 'carve' up a neutron star into smaller, more manageable and less destructive chunks, I'm pretty sure that we'd have more to think about than gold or platinum. I'm not sure of the street value of plutonium and uranium or other heavy radioactive elements, but I'm guessing that we'd be looking for those instead to power our mining devices and/or sell to the aliens who don't have nukes yet.