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A comment on Ancient stars made extraordinarily heavy elements, researchers find. Parent comment

Re:Ancient stars made extraordinarily heavy elements, resear... by blacksmith_tb on Friday December 08, 2023 @02:08PM (#38572853)
There's been recent talk of finding a new island of stability[1] though I don't think we imagine those super-heavy elements would have half-lives of more than thousands of years (so probably not very handy for alien engineers).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability#Possible_n...

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Re:Ancient stars made extraordinarily heavy elements, resear... by thsksbd on Friday December 08, 2023 @02:30PM (#38573109)
Yea, and it is super cool to think that, but either

1. the kinetic barrier is impossibly large that even novas cant cross it, or

2. the "stable" elements are not very long lived in astronomical time scales.

Probably both are true, either way, it's a wash - no super heavy elements for alien races to play with.

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