“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 star stuff”.
– Carl Sagan We have calcium in our bones,
iron in our veins,
carbon in our souls,
and nitrogen in our brains.
93 percent stardust,
with souls made of flames,
we are all just stars
that have people names"
Nikita GillI think it might be an allusion to alchemy. Basically, the alchemists believed that ash (what was left after burning something) was the soul of all things...And-- this is where my complete lack of understanding about science shows-- I'm pretty sure Ash has lots of carbon? It's, you know, poetic. Many have claimed that poems are the "language of paradox" so it's okay for it to be a little non-literal. My interpretation of it, though, is that the soul is something impure that you must burn away, or maybe that the soul is polluted by our own words and behavior. It's definitely not meant to be scientifically accurate.
carbon's oxides are all gaseous at standard temperature and pressure
little carbon, then, not none
But not because “you are like a drop in the ocean,” but because “you are like an ocean in a drop.”
The idea of soul can be objectionable when it is based on an immortal being or on a vitalist life-force (like “anima” of the Latin). But it seems fine when it is based on the psyche (like the “Psuche” of the Greek).
I embrace taboo words like soul because they 1. are common 2. are useful for referring to things that seem pretty important (like avoiding soulless companies or products or buildings) and 3. are challenging to my normal (scientific) understanding of the world.
Still, I’d be more comfortable if the poem referred to the “carbon of our souls” rather than “carbon in our souls.” Hmm…
You and I are complicated but we're made of elements Like a box of paints that are mixed to make every shade They either combine to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are
- They Might Be Giants
The conversion is also very slow. And expensive. To make it this way it would cost a Quadrillion dollars an ounce.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-l...
Once you get past the enormous energy costs to do this you have a secondary problem, all the gold produced this way is radioactive and it beta decays to.. Mercury.
13.5 billion years seems like the time required to create a star, have the star die and blow up, have all that material settle and create a new star, then the planets are formed, than enough time on one of those planets needs to pass for life to form, then complicated life.
Therefore, life could have developed in a few tens to few hundreds of millions of years after the big bang. That's still true even if we assume that heavier elements are created mainly when neutron stars collide and not by super/hypernovas as we theorized before LIGO/Virgo observatories.
Consequently, we likely are not a "progenitor" civilization in the universe if we only consider planets formation. We might not see anyone out there either because there's a great filter for intelligent life to emerge (so the bottleneck is in our past) or because few/no civilizations get to have an impact on their host stars (the filter is in our future) that would allow us to see them.
That being said, I wasn't aware of how LIGO changed the understanding of how heavier elements are usually formed, guessing it changed the expected neutron star prevalence? Do you have any additional reading on that?
Regarding the second point have a look at https://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-GW170817Kilonova/in... . That isn't my field of specialization, so I am not sure about recent publications. At the time though this was a big deal as kilonovas seem to be the primary source of heavy nuclei in the universe. That particular event crested between 1/100th to 1/1000th solar masses worth of heavy ( heavier than iron) nuclei. This is a greater rate than supernovas estimations.
It's not about the prevalence, but about the light curves observed during the event AT 2017gfo. They indicate significant heavy metal ejection but, what's interesting, also production.
> mergers of neutron stars contribute to rapid neutron capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis
These two articles cite the relevant papers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW170817#Scientific_importance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis#Neutron_star_c...
Maybe for a main sequence star, but there other processes that involve nucleosynthesis.
You raise an interesting question though: what is the earlier point of time where the heavy elements were abundant enough for life (as we know it) to form? Just because we started existing at +13.5 billion years, it doesn't mean carbon based life couldn't have formed much earlier.
>all the atoms in our universe/galaxy/solar system with a mass up to that of iron are formed in the core of stars
Roughly 90% of the helium atoms in the universe were created via Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
He does an excellent job explaining things and put it to me like this.
Elements to the Left of Iron can undergo fusion and release energy, Elements to the right can undergo fission and release energy.
Iron IS the line because it needs energy to do either of these.
All elements want to find stability, and Iron is that Element because it needs energy for either fission or fusion.
So yes, Iron is the dividing line and this is what makes it so stable.
Edit: forgot to link the chart when referencing left or right..
(Yes I know it's technically mesons at the scale we're talking about but it doesn't rhyme so there)
-- Yeah there are a few alternative designs, but nothing that seems to do the division. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_periodic_tables
And really, i guess everything is physics if you get specific enough.
Iron will not happily fuse further because this NEEDS energy and where would that energy come from?
"heavier than iron" elements are produced when a star explodes because that collapse produces enormous amounts of energy.
During the collapse, the outer edge of the star is accelerated to something like 20% of the speed of light, that is an ENORMOUS amount of energy slamming down on the core.
Lastly, neutron starts don't produce energy, they are the incompressible remnants of a dead star.
The wikipedia page is pretty good, as always: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis
Almost everything with mass of 90 or above comes predominantly from neutron star mergers, basically.
I'd be interested to know if we're in an element rich vein of the wider universe or if all the good stuff is more or less evenly distributed?
>Some whole galaxies have average metallicities only 1/10 of the Sun's. Some new stars in our galaxy have more metals in them than the original solar nebula that birthed the Sun and the planets did. So the amount of "metals" like oxygen and carbon can vary by a few orders of magnitude from star to star, depending upon it's age and history.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9tujxn/are_the_...
That kind of expansion rate has to rival any explosion imaginable.
I have no idea, though, but I'm pretty sure I watched a video about this.
all is a strong word
for example: the nuclear fusion experiment in the article, that would have produced a few atoms heaver that hydrogen
(not to mention all the nuclear bombs that had a fusion stage)
"Stars are made of quarks"
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/d/d9/Qu...
star stuff = sternzeug. stern stoff = star fabric
https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/110/docs/uncleftish_beh...
So think about two stars killing each other to make your jewelry.
These heaver-than-iron elements are created in a very interesting and exotic process. When a large enough star dies it explodes in a supernova, and a huge amount of energy and neutrons are released in a very short period of time. This supernova generates enough energy and neutron material that small amounts of heavier elements like gold, platinum, etc. are created through exotic nuclear fusion reactions, even though these heavy fusion reactions are energy-absorbing.
It's interesting to think when you're wearing jewelry made from gold or platinum, all of those atoms in your jewelry were created during the death of a star.