Elements_Origin

[dik]

My son sent me this this morning... He comes across stuff that he thinks I would like to know...

So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[JohnRBaker]

Could you post the link to the site?

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[dik]

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13873

So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[JohnRBaker]

Thank you

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[electricpete]

Here's the simple picture that I think of in terms of where the elements came from. Just after the big bang we had Hydrogen and a little bit of Helium spread almost uniformly and expanding. And over time the uniformity deviations magnified themselves through gravity effects and tended to convert those those gaseous clouds into less unfirom clumps which became stars. Stars are capable of fusion which is exothermic only up to iron, which is the peak of the binding energy per nucleon curve. Since binding energy represents a negative energy, it is the lowest energy arrangement of nucleons and elements on both sides can spontaneously move towards it in an exothermic nuclear reaction (fission is an example of elements on the right side of the curve moving towards the center where iron is). To form anything above iron requires something endothermic (at least from a nuclear energy point of view) and a common example of that is supernovae. I'm sure there are a lot of other star explosion and collapse scenarios that fall in the same category but supernovae is the one I think of.

Those trans-iron elements (star dust) are part of what is common within living things today. Somehow all of these elements including the star dust elements from these crazy cosmic events of ancient times combined in the primordial soup leading to a self replicating molecule like DNA that led to single celled organisms that somehow eventually evolved to plants that could convert solar energy (from the fusion reactor in the sky) into chemical energy, driving chemical reactions uphill (endothermic from a chemical reaction standpoint) to produce biological fuels (oxygen and carbohydrates) that could support complex mobile animals. Eventually they evolved to monkey-like beings standing on 2 legs that could communicate by talking. And then preserve their knowledge further through writing. And eventually the industrial revolution. And computers, mobile phones, and even... eng-tips! Look out in the night sky and you might be able to see Mars (the 4th brightest thing after the moon, Venus, and Jupiter) ... we put our technology there, too.

Of course I'm not the one who made up or figured out that story. And maybe I told it wrong and left out just a few steps along the way. But ya gotta admit it's a pretty remarkable story.




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(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Or as Carl Sagan used to say:

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[electricpete]

Yup. Star dust.

 

[Artisi]

is that similar to fairy dust?

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)