Far out cosmology: elements from exploding stars (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 08, 2021, 15:00 (1233 days ago) @ David Turell

The source of heavy elements discovered from very special stars:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/star-explosion-hypernova-supernova-universe-heavy-e...

"Violent explosions of massive, magnetized stars may forge most of the universe’s heavy elements, such as silver and uranium.

"These r-process elements, which include half of all elements heavier than iron, are also produced when neutron stars merge. But collisions of those dead stars alone can’t form all of the r-process elements seen in the universe. Now, scientists have pinpointed a type of energetic supernova called a magnetorotational hypernova as another potential birthplace of these elements.

"The results, described July 7 in Nature, stem from the discovery of an elderly red giant star — possibly 13 billion years old — in the Milky Way’s halo. By analyzing the star’s elemental makeup, which is like a star’s genetic instruction book, astronomers peered back into the star’s family history. Forty-four different elements seen in the star suggest that it was formed from material left over “by a special explosion of one massive star soon after the Big Bang,” says astronomer David Yong of the Australian National University in Canberra.

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"The researchers think that magnetorotational hypernovas are rare, composing only 1 in 1,000 supernovas. Even so, such explosions would be 10 times as common as neutron star mergers today, and would produce similar amounts of heavy elements per event. Along with their less energetic counterparts, called magnetorotational supernovas, these hypernovas could be responsible for creating 90 percent of all r-process elements, coauthor Chiaki Kobayashi, an astrophysicist at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, England, had previously calculated. In the early universe, when massive, rapidly rotating stars were more common, such explosions could have been even more influential."

Comment: The theory that Earth received its elements by ancient star explosions is not new. But the known process only covered lighter elements. This opens up the possibilities for the heavier ones. The oddball activities in the universe, for which dhw wonders about for God's reasons, all haver purpose. Just wait for research to explain. Just because we don't know all the answers is no reason for doubt.