There is a lot of gold in the universe. Nobody knows where it came from.
Something is raining Go About the universe. But nobody knows what it is.
Here’s the problem: Gold is partWhich means you can’t get over the ordinary chimical interaction – anyway Chemists He tried for centuries. To make the lustrous metal, you need to link 79 protons and 118 neutrons together to form one Atomic nucleus. This is an intense nuclear one fusion reaction. But this intense fusion doesn’t happen as frequently, at least not nearby, to make the giant set of gold that we find. Land And elsewhere in Solar System. And a new study finds that the most common origin of gold – collisions between neutron stars – can’t explain gold’s abundance either. So where does gold come from? There are some other possibilities, including severe supernovae, which render the star from the inside out. Unfortunately, even these strange phenomena cannot explain the extent of the local universe, as the new study found.
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Neutron star collisions collide with gold by briefly smashing protons and neutrons together into atomic nuclei, then ejecting those heavy, newly bonded nuclei through space. Chiaki Kobayashi, an astrophysicist at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom, said that ordinary supernovae stars cannot explain the gold in the universe because stars massive enough to melt gold before they die – which are rare – turn into black holes when they explode. Author of the new study. In a normal supernova, this gold is absorbed into the black hole.
So what about those supernovae that flip stars? Kobayashi told Live Science that this type of stellar explosion, the so-called magnetic rotating supernova, is “a very rare supernova, orbiting very quickly.”
During the occurrence of a rotating magnetic supernova, the dying star rotates so rapidly and is fractured with such strong magnetic fields that it flips from the inside out during its explosion. While dying, the star releases jets of extremely hot matter into space. And because the star has turned inside out, its jets are filled with gold cores. Stars that melt gold are absolutely rare. Stars that incorporate gold and then throw it into space like these are rare.
Kobayashi and her colleagues found that even neutron stars as well as spinning magnetic supernovae together cannot explain Earth’s gold wealth.
“There are two stages to this question,” she said. “Number one: neutron star mergers are not enough. Second, even with the second source, we are still unable to explain the amount of gold observed.”
She said previous studies were correct that neutron star collisions unleash a hail of gold. But these studies did not take into account the rarity of these collisions. It’s hard to estimate how many times small neutron stars – the same super-dense remnants of ancient supernovae – collided together. But it certainly isn’t very common: Scientists have only seen it happen once. Even rough estimates show it doesn’t collide often enough to produce all of the gold found in the solar system, Kobayashi and her co-authors found.
“There are two stages to this question,” she said. “Number one: neutron star mergers are not enough. Second, even with the second source, we are still unable to explain the amount of gold observed.”
She said previous studies were correct that neutron star collisions unleash a hail of gold. But these studies did not take into account the rarity of these collisions. It’s hard to estimate how many times small neutron stars – the same super-dense remnants of ancient supernovae – collided together. But it certainly isn’t very common: Scientists have only seen it happen once. Even rough estimates show it doesn’t collide often enough to produce all of the gold found in the solar system, Kobayashi and her co-authors found.
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“This paper is not the first to suggest that the collision of neutron stars is insufficient to explain the abundance of gold,” said Ian Roederer, an astrophysicist at the University of Michigan who is hunting for traces of rare elements in distant stars.
But Kobayashi and colleagues’ new paper, published Sept.15 The Astrophysical JournalIt has one big advantage: It’s very comprehensive, Roederer said. The researchers poured on a mountain of data and put it into powerful models of how the galaxy evolved and produced new chemicals.
“The paper contains references to 341 other publications, which is three times the typical review in The Astrophysical Journal these days,” Roderer told Live Science.
Gathering all that data together in a meaningful way amounts to a “breakthrough effort”, he said.
Using this approach, the authors were able to explain the formation of atoms like light carbon-12 (six protons and six neutrons) and heavy like Uranium-238 (92 protons and 146 neutrons). This is an impressive range, Roderer said, covering elements that are often overlooked in these types of studies.
Mostly, the mathematics succeeds.
Neutron star collisions, for example, produced strontium in their model. Match Observations of strontium in space After colliding with one neutron star, scientists observed it directly.
Rotating magnetic supernovae explain existence Europium In their model, another atom that has proven difficult to explain in the past.
But gold remains a mystery.
Kobayashi said that something scientists don’t know must be making gold. Or it is possible that more neutron stars collide with gold than current models suggest. Either way, astrophysicists still have to do a lot of work before they can explain the source of all that grandiose glamor.
Originally published on Live Science.
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