- 3737 - NEUTRON STARS - how gold was produced? What are the elements astronomers find in the stars? Not just gold. Colliding neutron stars forge Strontium, Lanthanum, and Cerium. In the beginning, the Big Bang produced hydrogen and helium. Other than some traces of things such as lithium, that’s all the matter the Big Bang produced.
--------------- 3737 - NEUTRON STARS - how gold was produced?
- Everything other than those two elements, hydrogen and helium, was largely produced by processes in the stars. The elements around us, those that comprise us people, were mostly formed within the hearts of stars. They were created in the furnace of stellar cores, then cast into space when the star died and became a supernova. But there are a few elements that are created differently. The most common one is gold.
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- While gold can be produced in a stellar core, the gold we have on Earth wasn’t produced that way. Gold is a very heavy element, so when a star explodes most of the gold stays in the core.
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- So where does our gold come from? Neutron star collisions. When two neutron stars collide, they are ripped apart creating a “kilo nova“. All that nuclear matter within the neutron stars is freed from the crushing weight of gravity and quickly forms into elements such as gold. The amount of gold we see in the galaxy agrees with the rate of neutron star collisions.
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- Astronomers have assumed neutron star collisions are also the primary source of other heavy elements, particularly the lanthanide series, also known as rare earth elements.
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- In 2017, gravitational wave observatories captured an event known as “GW170817“. Unlike gravitational events that were the merger of two black holes, this one was a merger of two neutron stars. The resulting kilonova was observed by 70 observatories across the world, making it the first great multi-messenger observation, combining data gathered from electromagnetic and gravitational waves.
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- Supercomputer simulations of kilonova explosions were used to calculate where absorption lines should appear based on different elements. When they compared their calculations to the observed spectra of GW170817, they were able to identify several rare earth elements, including strontium, lanthanum, and cerium.
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- This is just the first multi-messenger observation of colliding neutron stars. Astronomers hope to discover even more rare earth elements in the debris from neutron stars.
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- November 8, 2022 3737
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--------------------- --- Wednesday, November 9, 2022 ---------------------------
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