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Colliding, Exploding Stars May Have Created All the Gold On Earth
coondoggie writes "Two dead stars smashing into each other and releasing massive amounts of energy may have created all of the heavy elements such as gold found on Earth. That's the main conclusion of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) researchers who estimated such a collision and subsequent blast of energy known as a gamma-ray burst produced and ejected as much as 10 moon masses worth of heavy elements — including gold."
TFA/TFS is misleading. The reported discovery:
* is not about gold can be created only by the collision of two stars (the supernova nucleosynthesis is still another channel, very probable the main one)
* is not about gold on Earth being originated in the collision of two start
* is about the collision of a neutron star which, besides producing a gamma-ray burst (due to acceleration of charged particles), have shown an afterglow characteristic to decays of "too neutron rich" nuclei into more stable elements (gold included)
Besides, the authors are not even sure
"We've been looking for a 'smoking gun' to link a short gamma-ray burst with a neutron star collision. The radioactive glow from GRB 130603B may be that smoking gun," said Wen-fai Fong, a graduate student at the CfA and a co-author of the paper.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The difference between this and the common knowledge is that the gold wasn't produced inside a single exploding star. As Neil deGrasse Tyson would eloquently phrase it - almost all the matter in our bodies and indeed on our planet is produced by a star going supernova and "spewing it's enriched guts throughout the cosmos".
For gold and some other heavy elements, the fusion of a star, even one going supernova, still can't produce these elements. These need a much bigger bang - that produced by TWO stars colliding together for a truly spectacular energetic detonation. The finding of these researchers isn't to suggest that this is just where gold on earth came from, but they're stating that all the heavy elements in the universe can only come about in similar cataclysmic events - rather than merely from a single star dying.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
I thought our heavy elements came mostly from the short-lived first generation of hypergiant hydrogen stars going supernova.
Supernova nucleosynthesis is still the main mechanism for creation of elements heavier than Fe. The guys report that they think other type of events may lead to the creation of heavy elements and they believe we already witnessed such an event
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I suspect that the concern of heavy elements being supernova products has to do with the short duration of the event, the perceived amount of time needed to generate the heavey elements involved, and the apparent distribution of heavy elements compared to the percieved age of the universe. Additionally while supernova events are not likely to be the sources of the high volume of grb events that are being detected. So what would be the products of grb's, and what are the likely causes of the events in the first place, if you eliminate the possibility of a grb being the result of supernova events even larger than what we think is the maximum, you end up having to look at other types of events, stars coliding with each other, dead stars coliding with each other, dead stars coliding with Neutron Stars, Neutron stars coliding with each other, dead stars with neutron stars, stars, dead stars, or neutron stars coliding with black holes, and black holes colliding with each other. Any of these collisions are possible, though of these the most probable are stars with stars, stars with dead stars, and dead stars with dead stars, as the perception is that small stars are far more frequent than stars large enough to collapse in a supernova.
As far as why to link to Networkworld.com, I suspect that the submitter couldn't find a better source.
You never know...
Not sure if that is true. Ordinary stellar nucleosynthesis can only produce elements up to iron, because nuclear fusion of iron or any other heavier element produces less binding energy per nucleon, and thus cannot be a viable means of producing energy for a star. The s-process that takes place in stars prior to going supernova is capable of producing elements like gold, all the way up to bismuth. Heavier elements are produced by the r-process, that is supposed to occur in core collapse supernovae.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
How you gonna get page views without incoherent, misinformed rambling?
You're no fun any more. /snark
I never have gotten the appeal of that show. I catch it every so often when I'm driving to or from a late install job. Every time it's some caller talking about being visited by aliens, or a guest proclaiming he has proof of the loch ness monster. Or worse yet, healing powers of crystals/pyramids/the mind. After a few minutes I have to turn it back to something rational.
And it's not that I don't believe in aliens and some of the other stuff on CtC, but these people are like 3rd graders in their proof and arguments.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Wouldn't the abundance of a semi-scarce highly useful industrial product be a net gain for society? Malleable, resistant to corrosion, excellent conductivity, low melting point. Not obtaining more of a useful material in order to maintain scarcity seems counter-productive.