Someone made a huge amount of gold!

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g_axelsson

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No, it's not alchemy but finally scientists have proof on how the heavier elements are made.
Two months ago1 two neutron stars collided 130 million light years from Earth. In the collision a huge amount of gold and platinum were created... about ten times the mass of the Earth!

Light and easy to digest presentation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAyk2OsKvtU

A bit slower but more in depth, the press conference : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFxLA3RGjnc

I LOVE Science!!!! :mrgreen:

Göran

1 The signal from this event arrived to earth two months ago, the collision happened 130 million years ago.
 
Goran,

Thanks for this awesome video. I love astronomy and GRF.

I wonder when some of that gold or pt will reach earth.

Great video.
 
While "normally" heavier elements form from lighter elements, neutron stars collisions provide a shorter route, from heavier elements to less heavier. This have been known for some time (at least theoretically)
 
While most science is way over my head, sometimes I think common sense leaves them looking a bit foolish.
If this is how gold is made, wouldnt it be mainly on the surface here on earth.
Why do we have veins that run deep into the earth, and it is incased in quartz rock?

Sure there may be solid gold stars out there floating around, but they didnt land on earth and bury themselves miles below the surface.

Just my humble opinion, which aint worth much !!
 
eaglewings35 said:
If this is how gold is made, wouldnt it be mainly on the surface here on earth.
Why do we have veins that run deep into the earth, and it is incased in quartz rock?
In very oversimplified terms, when the earth was being formed and all the bits of stuff were gathering together, it was often molten from the heat of all the collisions, so all the stardust attracted here by gravity mixed with all the other "stuff". As the earth cooled, a crust formed, but a lot of heavy stuff settled into the core. Some of that has spewed out from time to time.

There's a lot more to it than that. Geology is really fascinating.

Dave
 
The gold and platinum on Earth was created long before the Earth and mixed with dust and gases in our galaxy. That dust cloud created our solar system about 4.56 billion years ago and that is what we are finding when we dig deep into the Earth in the hunt of that yellow metal.

Very little of newly formed elements find their way down to our planet because of the solar wind, it might be really weak but it is powerful enough to blow away fine dust particles and gases from outside the solar system. It stretches far away outside of the orbit of Neptunus and Pluto, but scientists think they have found the edge from measurements done by the Pioneer spacecrafts.
So our solar system has been shut off from new material for the last 4.56 billion years.

There was a theory that most of the gold and platinum (and other heavy elements) were formed by neutron star collision but now they have actually seen it in the spectroscopic data and been able to measure the amount of heavy atoms created in the collision. This is a first and quite spectacular.
The theory has gone from being purely theoretically to actually being tested and verified.

In theory gold from that explosion could already be here, the energy released was huge and a lot of it has been transferred into kinetic energy of the particles moving outwards, but at that energy level virtually all matter is ionized and would probably be trapped by the magnetic field of the galaxy that hosted the neutron stars.
Without doing any calculations I'm sure that some material moved outwards at speeds close to that of light but since the particles are charged they would be captured by the magnetic fields and mixed with the local dust and gas clouds in that galaxy.
Sorry to anyone looking forward to gold raining from the sky. :D

Göran
 
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